Blood Bayou
by shandytaff
Summary: Stranded while searching for a Louisiana ghost town, a paranormal TV crew discover the bayou never relinquishes its secrets—or guests—without exacting its gruesome price. (Standalone adaptation of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Updates Fridays.)
1. Chapter 1

There is a place deep in the bayous of Louisiana where people go to disappear. Grandmère had told him the stories. The widower who'd followed the fifollets into the black water under a moonless sky, having seen his wife's smile in the dancing lights. The men from out of state with more expensive gear than sense. They'd greedily wandered into the dead, silent backwater shallows. Trapped in narrow veins clogged with weeds, coolers full of fish but unable to find their way, they'd lost their minds. And the rougarou, with its mixed up body, man and dog stitched together, lurching through the still curtains of Spanish moss where porch lights wouldn't reach.

The bayou was an old place, she used to tell Andre, and old places had old souls. The bayou kept its secrets close.

The three of them had started down I-49 at the crack of a red dawn, crammed sullen and sunken-eyed into the KSHG-TV van with the show decal on the side. No amount of coffee could keep Pete awake; he called shotgun but fell asleep with the map open on his lap, still smelling like yesterday's booze. The new cameraman, Clancy Javis, sat stretched out in the back with the equipment, fiddling with a camera. Polaroids for some undergraduate photography class. On the way out of Shreveport, he'd attempted fraternization with Pete for all of five minutes before giving up in bafflement.

Andre couldn't fault the kid for trying. "Don't mind him. Long night, you know. He's always like that," he'd offered, only to earn a glare from Pete. They drove in silence after that.

They reached Theriot a little after one. A trim little blue and white diner sat atop stilts at the outskirts of town. When Andre pulled the door open, it stirred the warm smell of coffee and frying seafood, and rustled leaflets tacked to the wall—more than two dozen faces smiling from missing persons posters as they slouched past to find a seat.

They ordered po'boys—real po'boys, on French bread, a crisp golden crackle to the crust that hugged a soft white heart. Gravy squeezed out on the first bite, subtly flavored and flecked with tender roast beef debris.

On the eve of their move to Missouri, Andre had run away from home. He didn't have a plan. It was just him and his bike and his bag of books, and he rode through the dark roads, a cool night wind in his hair. His wandering led him to the light outside Grandmère's house. He still remembered seeing her on the porch, waiting in her rocking chair like she'd somehow known. She made him go back home, but not before making him one last roast beef po'boy. They sat together in her little house, in that kitchen that was all spices and cigarettes, and he'd eaten that po'boy, wishing the last bite would never come.

Louisiana cooking had a way of soothing the soul. By the time the waitress came back around to their table, Clancy had brightened up considerably, and even Pete seemed to have mellowed some. Their cozy nook had a view of the trees across the water, and the steely patches of swamp marking the sprawl of Bayou Dularge. The clouds broke briefly, and the water brightened to an oily gloss.

The waitress jotted down Clancy's sweet potato pie, asked, "So, what brings you to Dularge? Come to fish?"

"We're filming a production," Pete said, and her eyes lit up.

"You're filmmakers?"

"Television," Andre said quickly. "We've got a show on KSHG. Sewer Gators." When she only smiled uncertainly, he added, "We focus on local Louisiana legends. Paranormal phenomena—"

"You're ghost hunters," she finished for him. He heard Pete snort softly. She looked around at the three of them, finally settling on Pete. She looked him up and down, taking in his getup. "That make you Agent Mulder?"

Pete smiled. "At your service."

"Catch any monsters lately?"

"We're working on it."

"Well, you won't find any X-Files here," she said. "The only excitement we get around here is when tourists get stranded at low tide."

"Actually," Andre said, "we're trying to get to Dulvey. This is Dulvey Parish, right?"

"No, we're still in Terrebonne. Did you say Dulvey?" After a pause, she said, "You'll wanna talk to Captain Dubois. He's a hundred and fifty or something. Been up every lake and bayou all along the coast. If anybody knows the way to Dulvey, it'll be him." She nodded to the end of the diner, where an old man sat by himself in the corner, nursing a beer.

The captain barely looked up at Andre's approach, only motioned for him to take a seat. With a face more rocky landscape than wrinkles, he looked about a hundred and fifty years old, but muscles stood out sinewy under his tanned skin, and his eyes were bright.

"Suppose Maggie from the tackleshop sent you." He speared Andre with a sharp look, adding with a jerk of his chin, "Your friends back there. The suit won't last a minute, and the other one looks like a stiff breeze'd knock him down. You're new to Dularge, so let me give you a word of advice. Sit the afternoon out. There's a storm coming, and I ain't gonna be the one to haul your sorry asses out when—not if—you get caught in that mess. The fish can wait."

Andre watched him tear a piece of bread and swipe up the remnants of his bisque. "We're not going fishing. We're looking to get to Dulvey Parish."

"Dulvey?" The captain leaned back to look at him. Something in his voice had changed. His words dripped out slow. "Now, what would you want with a place like that? That's no place for the living."

In spite of himself, Andre felt a prickle. The diner looked different; the sun had been blotted out again. Behind him, he could hear the waitress talking to Pete and Clancy, but he couldn't make out the words. Just white noise. The captain stared at him, the remains of his meal forgotten between them.

"You've been to Dulvey?" Andre asked.

"Not for some time," the captain said. "Used to be some fishing communities out on Bayou Toctoc. That's what folks called Dulvey, even if it wasn't a town as such. They had a church. Even a few plantations left over from the old days. They used to come into town all the time, with crawfish and trout for the coop. Then, a few years ago, fewer and fewer of 'em came back."

"What happened?"

"Floods happened. Every storm that came up the gulf took a bit of Dulvey with it. The bayou got eaten up piece by piece by the water. Those were some bad days. Bad things happening to good people. Those who could left. Not too many people willingly stayed. I hear the bayou came up around the church, but the preacher stuck to his guns. Not sure if that's a mark of faith or madness."

"If I wanted to get to Dulvey…" Andre began.

The captain shook his head. "No one in their right mind goes into Bayou Toctoc. Water's shallow, never been dredged. The whole place is filled with rotten wood and weeds. The captains all steer clear of the place."

"What about getting there by boat?"

The captain's eyes narrowed. "Were you listening to me, boy? This ain't Texas, or Missouri. This is the bayou. The bayou changes on you. Not just from one year to another. When the sun sets, everything looks different. People go missing in the bayou. People make stupid mistakes in the bayou, and they die from those mistakes. This ain't a game, understand me?"

Andre was suddenly reminded of Grandmère's stories. He tried to make his tone placating, but held firm. "We just wanna take a quick look around. In and out. Straightforward. We're not gonna stay past nightfall."

The captain glared, but relented. "I reckon I'll never understand," he said as Andre got a notepad out to write down directions to the church. "What the hell are you looking for in Dulvey, son?"

* * *

Beneath a bruised sky, the narrow road twisted through the trees. There were no signs, only battered mailboxes and driveways hidden among the shrubs. Sumac blurred by, berries a deep poison red. With every passing hundred yards, the woods seemed to press in tighter, and branches clawed at the roof of the van, making Clancy jump.

Twice, they were forced to double back in reverse when the road ended in a wall of twisted branches. What was supposed to take twenty minutes turned into an hour. Andre drove at an unbearable crawl, leaning over the steering wheel. Even so, the suspension rocked and groaned over patches of sunken asphalt.

They finally came to a break in the trees, where a sign advertised gas, but the gas station roof buckled inward, and the lot was deserted and covered in weeds. Every inch of the place had faded and peeled, marked by rot. An old man sat in the shelter of the entrance with a lumpy yellow dog by his feet.

Andre got down to ask for directions, and the others followed, eager to stretch their legs. Both were sweating visibly in spite of the A/C. The air was heavy, and clotted in the lungs with each breath, thick and quiet with decay. When the wind picked up, it had a strange upward pull, and made the treetops murmur.

It was going to rain, the old man said in a sleepy voice. The big yellow dog lay puddled on the ground downwind of a rusty fan. If it weren't for the brief flickers of its eyebrows, blinking flies from its rheumy eyes, it could've been dead. The pair looked like old taxidermy, faded out in the sun.

When Andre introduced himself in his halting French as Doucet, borrowing Grandmère's name, the old man seemed to revive. He gave a wide, gummy grin, beckoned him over with a gnarled hand, saying, "Come see, come see."

Overjoyed to have company, he offered Andre ancient pralines and cream soda and a place to sit by him in the shade with the fan. He had years' worth of words bottled up in his frail body, stories about places no longer on any map, jokes told by people long dead. When Andre asked about Dulvey and the old church, he started talking about the town, but quickly drifted into rambling anecdotes in his thick, sleepy mix of French and English Andre could only half understand.

Over by the van, Pete and Clancy stood around and chatted. Pete said something, gesturing with his hands, and Clancy smiled and nodded. The lines of their bodies were loose and relaxed.

Then, Pete looked over. He caught Andre's eye and made a little helicoptering gesture with one finger—wrap it up. Andre gestured back—five more minutes—and Pete acknowledged him with a nod.

There was a girl from Dulvey, the old Cajun said. Back in the old days, before the bayou swelled and sank Dulvey under the water. An unremarkable girl everyone had seen but no one knew, but on the day she went missing, her mother was found unconscious, fainted dead away on the floor in their home. When she came to, she insisted she'd gone to wake her daughter only to find something else in her bed, something with the face of a dog.

For months afterwards, people in Dulvey saw things at night. Strange things, unexplainable things. Mutilated animals were left on porches. Bone chimes in trees and inhuman howling. A ragged, dirty child that, when spotted, galloped away on all fours in a blur of tangled limbs. Some said it was a letiche, a vengeful spirit. Others blamed mass hysteria.

Finally, the missing girl's body was found washed up on shore, but there was something very wrong about it, they said. She was given a quiet burial beneath a tree, and within a year, the tree had died. The grass turned gray. Where she was buried, nothing grew.

The old man fell silent, his eyes dull, his skin like paper. Andre shivered. The wind had changed, and he could smell the rain coming. The dark weight of damp and decaying vegetation had grown stronger. Beyond the rotting trees, the clouds moved fast in a timelapse of light and greenish shadow.

Pete shouted something. Andre looked up, but Pete wasn't even looking his way. He was jabbing an accusing finger at Clancy, and Clancy batted his hand away. Clancy wasn't smiling anymore. He looked confused and angry.

Andre quickly said goodbye and jogged back across the lot to the van. Sunken in his chair, the old man didn't move or speak, his cloudy eyes fixed on something only he could see.

"I just— I don't get it. I was just saying it's unfair, that's all. What they pulled— it was a dick move. I'm on your fucking side, man—"

Pete cut him off. "Look, look. When I need a completely useless fucking opinion, Clancy, I'll be sure to ask you, okay? Until that day comes—"

"You don't have to be a fucking asshole. I was just—"

"Until that day comes, you just do your fucking job. Last I checked, you're the cameraman. You're being paid to man the camera, not run your fucking mouth, so do your fucking job right, and keep your mouth shut." He turned to Andre, cutting Clancy out of the conversation. "You done? Good. Let's go."

They swapped seats so Pete was driving. As they settled in, Pete adjusted his mirrors and asked, "How far to Dulvey?"

"I'm not sure," Andre admitted. "It can't be too far."

"What'd the old man say?"

"He didn't say."

"Fuck's sake."

"Just follow the road. If we don't find anything, we'll double back."

Pete let out a frustrated sound, but inched the van along the road. "Are you shitting me right now? We drag ourselves straight through the ass end of the sticks, and for what? Dulvey, Terrier, whatever the fuck— it's all bumfuck nowhere. You think any of those idiot tinfoilers watching the show know the difference? Nobody cares what backwater shithole the episode's filmed at."

"Eyes on the road, Pete."

"You ask me, we should go back to that other place and fudge it. Find some old house, do a walkthrough, interview a couple hicks, add sounds in post. I mean, let's face it. There'll be no ghost—never is. Are we even going the right way?"

"Hey, this isn't ideal for any of us," Clancy said from the back seat. "I'm probably gonna end up spending my twentieth in the fucking bayou with you guys, but you won't hear me complain."

Pete ignored him. "Andre, do you know where we're going? Do you know the way?"

"Just drive," Andre said.

"Andre."

Andre hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said, and Pete let out an angry groan. "I thought it was gonna be straightforward. I should've done more research before we left. I made a mistake."

"Un-fucking-believable. Were you planning on sharing this little detail with the rest of the class? You know— Hey Pete, let's take a six hour drive out to the middle of nowhere to film at a location that may or may not even fucking exist. Where is it, you ask? I don't know, I'm a fucking moron who forgot how to do his basic fucking job."

Andre didn't say anything. The only thing to do at this point was let him blow off the steam.

"Lay off him, man," Clancy said.

Pete twisted in his seat and snapped, "Was I talking to you? Did I ask your fucking opinion, Clancy?"

There was a pause, then Clancy said calmly, "Pull over."

He started rustling around for his stuff, jamming his camera and polaroids back into his backpack, and when Pete stopped the van, Clancy said to Andre, "I'm sorry, man. I've got this headache all of a sudden, and— I'm gonna go sleep it off. You've got my pager."

"It's a long walk back," Andre said.

"I'll take my chances," Clancy said. He hopped out and stood at the side of the road for a moment, then started back down the road in the direction of the old gas station at a steady clip, shoulders hunched.

Pete watched him go. "Son of a… Can you believe this— Andre, you're just gonna let him walk off like that?"

"You wanna double back and give him a lift back to town?"

Pete didn't answer. He squinted up through the tree cover at the swelling thunderhead, bruised and heavy with rain. "What a fucking dumbass. Where do they finds these fucking amateurs?" He glanced over, saw Andre looking at him, and put the van back into gear and drove on. "Fuck it, we don't need him. He wants to run into hillbilly cannibals out here, that's his call. Not our problem."

The radio signal fizzled out when the van took a sharp turn, drowning CCR in static. The trees rocked in a howl of wind, tearing leaves from branches. Fat drops burst against the windshield.

Andre fiddled with the knob. There was nothing but a whitewater roar all up and down the band, broken only by short snippets of sound: a preacher, a distorted, wailing choir. The only intelligible station was 97.7 FM, and the DJ spoke in a clear, whispered monotone through the fuzz of static and rain. He sounded like he was grinning, enunciating through his teeth, his cadence too regular.

"—on the slide guitar, playing that delta blues classic, Death Letter. And you're listening to WSTA, 97.7 FM. The voice of the bayou."

"Turn it off," Pete said with a grimace. "Or go back to the religious station. Jesus."

"Hang on," Andre said.

"We received a letter from one of our listeners. He told us he was canoeing on a little bayou last week when he encountered the A-tisket Whistler. Quote, 'I turned tail and sped back up that bayou like the devil himself was on my tail.'" The DJ laughed. It sounded metallic. "Let me tell you, folks, when you're out on that flat, calm water and you start hearing a whistling coming from the shore among the cypress trees, calling for you, it's probably not a good idea to investigate the sound. As the saying goes, 'A-tisket, a-tasket, he'll put you in a casket'—"

Pete reached for the radio, fumbling for a moment before hitting the power switch.

The van lurched violently and went offroad. Pete stood on the brakes, but the van was tipping, nosing down, and then it slid tractionless and cut into the tall grass in a crackle of snapping twigs, and stopped with a bang against a tree.

"Oh, shit," Pete said. He shot Andre a startled look. "You okay?" He tried to reverse, but the van wouldn't budge. He tried again, pressing down harder. Nothing.

"Stop," Andre said. "You're sinking us deeper. Let me take a look."

Pete didn't look at him. "I don't get it. I was going straight. I was going straight, and the road was just gone."

"Wait here," Andre said, and hopped out of the van.

Thunder split the sky overhead. Even under the trees, he was drenched within moments. Spongy mud sucked at his shoes with each step. The bumper was fine, but the front tires had gone in. He wiped water out of his face and looked back up to the road. Cloudy water seeped down into the hollow, puddling around the van.

Under the downpour, they dragged the floor mats out and built a bridge for the front wheels. Pete managed to take the van back by a few inches before it sank back in, leaving furrows that instantly filled with water. The rain battered at them in heavy sheets, and the wind forced them to shout as they tried to shore up the makeshift bridge with wood.

"There's too much water," Pete said when they retreated back to the van. He was silent for a moment, looking helplessly angry, then smacked the steering wheel. "Fuck. Fuck this fucking rain."

A drop ran down the side of Andre's face. He swiped it off. "At least no one's hurt."

They sat in silence and shivered for a minute, listening to the storm. It looked like the sickly green sky had broken, but the interior of the van dulled the noise to a muffled roar.

"We need to get out of here," Pete said. "What the hell do we do? Can we call someone? Will they even be able to find us out here?"

"There was a mailbox back there. We can hike back, figure out where we are. Call from there. Maybe get some help."

"That mailbox was a fucking mile back."

"If a flash flood hits, we can't be down here." And neither could the equipment, but Andre didn't rub it in.

Pete went quiet. He stared out the blurry windshield, then said, "If this gets back to Shreveport, just tell them— tell them it was me. But if fucking Clancy asks—"

Andre suddenly felt the urge to smile, but it quickly went away. "It was an accident."

Pete nodded, though he still didn't look over. His way of saying thank you. Or sorry. Maybe both. When he did speak, some of the stress had gone out of his voice. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

On the way back up to the road, Pete slid and landed on his hands and knees with a stifled curse. He tried to brush the mud off, and angrily thrashed through the weeds to Andre, growling under his breath. Fuck the bayou, fuck nature. Should've stayed in bed.

The rusty mailbox stood at an angle by the side of the road. They followed a muddy gravel path through the pines, where it ended in a black wrought iron fence. The fence was topped with barbed wire.

There was an intercom mounted to the gate. The thing looked jury-rigged from an old telephone and a speaker, with a sloppy loop of wire peeking out of the mount. While Pete peered through the bars, Andre pushed the intercom button and waited for a response.

"Think anybody's home?" Pete asked.

Home wasn't a farmhouse like the others they'd passed on the way in. Beyond the fence, the drive ran under an ancient, twisting oak and plunged past a little house. A massive structure crouched deep in the estate behind the house. Andre could just barely make out the bone white pillars in the haze of rain.

A grainy voice came through the intercom. A woman's. "Who is it?"

"Uh, hello, ma'am," Andre said. "My friend and I, we ran into some car trouble. We need a tow, but we're from out of town and we don't know where we are. We could really use some help."

There was a pause, then the voice said, "Come up to the main house. Use the side entrance."

"Thank you," Andre said, and the gate lock slid back with a racking sound.

A push of wind cut across the estate as they passed under the oak. The thick branches swayed and groaned. There was no sign of movement in the black windows of the little house—the guest house, Andre guessed. It was weather-beaten, boards haphazardly nailed over a broken window, all of it recessed into a porch curtained with kudzu.

The plantation house stood tall against the sky, clean and white, a stubborn relic of the antebellum years. The columned veranda continued around to the front, where an avenue of tangled oaks vanished into the water. If the property had originally been carved out along the bank of Bayou Toctoc, the rising water had since taken a chunk of it away.

The woman from the intercom was waiting for them at the side entrance, by the garage. Bony, messy brown hair pulled back. Faded and plain, maybe mid-fifties. She looked wary as they approached the steps, but she took one look at their sorry state and her face crumpled. "Oh, you poor things." She pushed the storm door open. "Quick, come inside."

She ushered them through into a warm, dry mud room, where they stood cold and dripping. A little embarrassed, Andre thanked her and apologized for the mess they'd tracked in.

She waved it away. "You said your car's dead? Whereabouts?"

"About half a mile down the road, that way. We got stuck in the mud. Is there a garage in town we could call?"

"There is Gladstone's, but I don't think they'd come out in this weather. Tell you what, though— My husband's out crabbing at the moment, but I'm sure he'll be happy to lend y'all a hand when he gets back."

"We'd hate to impose—"

"Now, don't be silly, young man. We look after our own out here."

"Much obliged, ma'am."

There was a creak from the doorway. A skinny, short-haired kid was leaning around the corner, watching them inquisitively.

"Zoe?" the woman said. "Don't stare, child. Here—go fetch some clean towels from the closet. Go on." When the girl left, she turned back to them. "That's my little girl, Zoe. And I'm Marguerite. Marguerite Baker."

"This is Peter Walken. I'm Andre Doucet."

"Howdy, ma'am," Pete said.

"It's very nice to meet you both," Marguerite said. "We don't get too many visitors all the way out here. Where are y'all from? Houma?"

"A little further north," Pete said. "Shreveport."

"Shreveport," Marguerite echoed. She looked a little wistful. "Haven't been up that way in an age. Not since we had our youngest."

The short-haired teen came running back, and Marguerite passed out towels, fussing over them. "Good, get yourselves warmed up. Might be the middle of June, but you'll catch your death in wet clothes, summer or winter."

It was embarrassingly pleasant being at the center of so much bossy attention. Zoe stayed out of the way while Marguerite found clean clothes for them to wear, but Andre could feel her watching.

Marguerite led them to the foot of the stairs. "The bathroom's upstairs, right down the hall to your left. Get out of those wet clothes, and just leave them to me. I'll get them cleaned up for ya."

"You're too kind, Mrs. Baker," Pete said. He had his anchor smile on, charm turned up to eleven, but he looked genuinely relieved.

"Oh, hush. Raising four children on the bayou, you get used to having mud-covered little varmints running around the house. Now, go on. I'll fix up some coffee. Warm ya right up."

* * *

Framed photos hung on the ambiguously beige wall along the stairway. A studio portrait of Marguerite and her husband, the both of them young, beautiful. A black and white of Marguerite with a baby at the beach. A skinny boy about Zoe's age, beaming with a trophy in his hands.

"That kid gives me the creeps," Pete said when they were alone. He pushed the door shut and came around the clawfoot tub to Andre, stripping off his shirt. "It's the eyes. Like something out of Village of the Damned."

"Zoe," Andre corrected. "Her name's Zoe." Then, he added, "They seem like nice people." He set his mobile phone on the counter and looked at it a moment before quickly changing into dry clothes.

"Think they know anything? Voodoo, hoodoo, doodoo— whatever. Hillbilly superstitions. I mean, this is a plantation. There's gotta be something. Vengeful ghosts from murdered slaves. Voodoo blood rituals. Skeletons in the closet— what?"

"You know how I feel about that word."

"Which one? Jesus, gimme a break. I'm spitballing here."

Andre said nothing.

The silence made the bathroom feel deeper, darker. Pete broke the silence. "D'you see those missing persons at the diner? If we could get an angle on that— Hillbilly cannibal… swamp people. A dozen people made into gumbo. Whaddaya think?"

"You didn't read the proposal."

Pete looked over from trying to straighten his disheveled hair. "Come on. At least one of us read it, right?"

"I wrote it."

"My point exactly. You're my teleprompter. Once we're rolling, just feed me the lines. I'll handle the rest."

Andre snorted softly.

"You coming?"

"In a minute. I need to call Shreveport."

Pete paused in the doorway. "What are you gonna say?"

Andre looked at him, watched him standing there trying to cover up a thread of anxiety with innocent curiosity. The sight steadied him. "I'll tell them we had a small weather-related setback, but we're otherwise on schedule. One potential source back at the gas station. Family here might be another."

"And Clancy?"

"All Shreveport cares is that we get the job done. How we get there is our business."

Pete nodded, finally looking away.

"I meet you downstairs in a minute. And Pete?"

"Yeah?"

"Hillbilly, voodoo— Don't say that stuff while we're here."

"Jesus."

"Promise."

"Whaddaya want, a goddamn pinky swear?"

"Pete."

"Fine." Pete mockingly drew a cross over his heart. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

* * *

A strange old woman was waiting at the end of the hallway when Andre came out. He almost didn't see her at first, but there she was, silhouetted in the light of the window. A frail, knobby old skeleton folded up with her shawl in a wheelchair.

"Evening, ma'am," Andre said.

She didn't move, didn't make a sound. He couldn't make out her features, but he knew she was looking right at him. She could've been there when they first came up, and they wouldn't have known. The wind rattled the windows, and made the eaves groan. Water ran green down the glass. He wasn't sure if she was breathing. Had she always been in the corner?

"She never speaks," Zoe said from the stairway.

She was sitting halfway up the stairs, playing with a small egg-shaped toy. As he came down, she looked up with her weird pale eyes, unblinking.

Andre searched for something to say. "Hey, that's cool. I've seen those before. It's like a pet, right? You take care of it? I've always wanted one."

"It's not mine. Not really. I like the Game Boy better, but Lucas won't let me have a turn." She nodded down the stairs. "Mama's in the kitchen. Maybe you should talk to her." She turned back to the little screen.

"Thanks, Zoe."

He followed the faint sounds of conversation through a pair of open double doors to the darkened dining room, where a fan spun lazily over the table. He could barely make it the trees outside. Light came through the pass through window and the doorway to the kitchen. Marguerite was stirring something delicious in a deep cast iron pot—spice and seafood. Pete leaned on the counter, holding a mug of coffee.

Catching sight of Andre, Pete said, "Speak of the devil."

Marguerite looked over and broke into a smile. "There you are. Peter was just telling me about your TV show. Sewer—?"

"Sewer Gators," Pete offered.

"I've always liked that kinda supernatural show," Marguerite said. "Unsolved Mysteries, Beyond Belief, Psi Factor—the stranger, the better." She motioned Andre over to the stove, gently blowing on the stirring spoon before holding it out for him to taste. "Here, tell me if it needs another dash of Tabasco."

The gumbo was a reddish brown from the roux—Cajun napalm, Grandmère used to call it, warning him away from the bubbling pan. The okra had made it thick, and in spite of the fresh cayenne's heat, there was a familiar subtlety to the flavor, seasoned, not spicy, that gave him a pang when he realized what it reminded him of.

Marguerite watched him expectantly. He gave her a smile. "It's perfect."

"More salt? Too much?"

"No, ma'am. I haven't had gumbo this good since my grandma made it for me when I was a kid."

"Can you believe this flatterer?" Marguerite said. She looked pleased, and deftly stirred a heap of shrimp into the pot before setting some water to boil. "Dinner will be ready soon. If the boys don't get back soon, we might have to start without 'em. What a terrible storm. Y'all must be famished after that ordeal."

"Oh, we wouldn't wanna trouble you—"

Pete shot him a flabbergasted look, and Marguerite said, "Now, I won't have any standing on ceremony in my house. There's plenty for all. Besides, you're all skin and bones, you poor thing. We need to get some meat on ya. I don't know what they feed y'all up north, but it can hardly be called proper food. It's like I always say, you can't get the real stuff at the top of the boot. Food is a way of life down here."

"Have you always lived in Dulvey?" Pete asked.

"We came over from St. Mary's after Hurricane Andrew. That'd be… '92." She poured Andre a mug of hot coffee. "We all wanted a fresh start, and Jack always wanted run a bed and breakfast, so when we saw the listing for the plantation, it seemed like a good fit. Plenty of room for guests, Jack's boats, a vegetable garden— The bayou didn't come up quite so high when we first bought the place, and you could walk all the way to the front under the oaks." She paused, then continued briskly, stirring the gumbo, "The bed and breakfast plan never quite took off, and things haven't always been easy, but this is our home. We're happy here."

"Well, you have a beautiful home."

"It took some doing getting it fixed up, believe me. Mold rotted bathrooms had to be remodeled. The whole property overtaken by weeds, kudzu covering the front of the building. The water came up that first year, nearly ruined my tea roses. But we reached an understanding with the bayou."

"Do you know much about the town?" Pete asked. "We were told most people moved away."

"That's right. They named the town after this plantation, but now we're pretty much the only ones left. Except St. Martin's. I reckon nothing short of the end times could drag Father Bellamy from his flock. At least what's left of it. You can catch him on the radio sometimes. 97.7 FM."

As they talked, Andre sipped his chicory coffee and took a look at the colorful magnet pinning a shopping list to the fridge. Four wobbly figures made of modeling clay—mom, dad, two kids. A little sun beaming down on them.

"Y'like that little thing? Zoe made it at school."

"She's quite the artist," Andre said.

"That she is. Give her a scrap of paper—heck, a paper napkin—and she'll doodle up a storm. Our Lucas is more of an inventor."

She motioned to a framed newspaper clipping hanging by the window. Taken from the Houma Times, it showed three smiling boys crouched on the grass by their robots, each the size of a small dog. The headline read, "Judges wowed by junior category at third annual amateur robotics competition". The boy on the left was the same as the one from the stairway photo—Lucas. He'd gotten second place.

Marguerite added rice to the pot and lowered it to a simmer to steam. "He loved taking things apart when he was little. Clocks, radios—had to see what was inside. He was always getting in trouble with his father, but that never stopped him." She checked on the shrimp; they rose a soft pink against the spoonful of gumbo. She turned the heat down to low, skimmed the rich grease off the surface. "I reckon inventing's his thing. His true calling. I hope you find your true calling as well."

"We have," Pete said. He gave Andre a hard pat on the shoulder, making him frown. "Doing this show with Andre's been a dream come true. Best years of my life. There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

"Glad you feel that way too, buddy," Andre said.

The storm door opened with a characteristic clack, letting in the sounds of heavy footfalls and voices over the relentless pounding rain. Then, the door banged shut, and a man called out in a singsong voice, "Honey, we're home."

"It's about time," Marguerite grumbled. She wiped her hands on a towel and passed through the dining room to the light of the hallway. "What took y'all so long? I was worried sick."

There were two men in the mud room in rain-slick ponchos and shrimp boots. While the skinnier of the two struggled with two heavy burlap sacks, the other pushed back his hood. Foggy glasses, a bushy salt and pepper beard to balance out his receding hairline. Sturdy, with a deep chuckle. Jack Baker. "Ah, get off my case, woman. At least we managed to remember the side door. No mud on the front porch."

"A monumental effort, I'm sure," Marguerite said. "Whatcha got for me?"

The beanpole opened a bag to show her. Something scrabbled around inside.

"We set down traps for the crabs, but they weren't interested," Jack explained as he shucked off his gear. "Not a single bite all morning, even with all those chicken necks. So we went down to the cutgrass I told you about by the road, that big ol' patch of hydrilla, and the place was like a little mudbug convention. We must've bagged— What do you reckon?"

"Ah, twenty pounds?" the beanpole said.

"Must be more than that. At least twenty five."

"Felt more like fifty."

Pete looked over at Andre in confusion, and Andre mouthed back, "Crawfish." It was uncomfortable standing there like spare pricks at a wedding, but Marguerite didn't introduce them, and he couldn't find an opening.

"Whatever it is," Jack said, "it's plenty for a crawfish boil and your gumbo."

"You'll have to settle for the boil," Marguerite said. "The gumbo couldn't wait."

The beanpole looked up from taking off his boots. "Aww, you can't be serious. We were out there all day—"

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you want something for supper, you gotta bring it to me at least two hours beforehand."

The beanpole screwed up his face in frustration, but fell silent. Out of the poncho, he was rail thin and awkward, head shaved, stubbly. Maybe mid-twenties, hard to tell for sure. He looked down at the sacks, then looked up and caught sight of Pete and Andre.

"Your mother's right," Jack said. He came into the hallway, wiping his glasses on his shirt. "We left it off too late, got a bit greedy. Hey, Zoe. How 'bout a kiss for your old man?"

"Eww, gross, dad."

The beanpole looked over to his parents, then back to Pete and Andre. His eyes flickered down to their clothes, and he frowned.

"Hi," Pete said.

Jack set a squirming Zoe down from where he'd grabbed her up in a bear hug. "Oh. I didn't realize we had guests."

The beanpole was trying to tell Marguerite something—Andre only caught "Mama, you gave them my"—but Marguerite spoke over him. "This is Andre and Peter. They came down on business and landed in some serious car trouble. I told them you could help. Fellas, this is my husband, Jack. And that there's our Lucas." She added in a quiet warning tone to Lucas, "Be nice."

As they shook hands, Marguerite told Jack, "They're from up north. They work at a TV station."

"That so?" Jack said. He had a strong, callused grip, a working man's hands, and an eagle's stare that never wavered.

"I'll leave you boys to it," Marguerite said, heading back to the kitchen. "Zoe, come help me set the table. And boys? Get cleaned up. Supper in ten."

"Y'all work in broadcasting?" Lucas asked, coming up for a handshake. His demeanor has changed. Now that he wasn't scowling, the pale smile on his gaunt face looked more like the kid who'd won the trophy all those years back. "What's the word? EFP?"

"Right, ah—" Pete said cautiously, "field production."

"Aww man, y'all got the coolest equipment. Those cameras are amazing. I've always wanted to see one'a those up close. See, I'm a bit of an amateur filmmaker myself. If I could get my hands on—"

"Stand down, Lucas," Jack cut in. "Get those mudbugs to the ice box in the pantry. We can't have 'em dying on us. Now—" He turned to the others. "What'd you say happened to your car?"

As Andre explained, Lucas carried a sack past. He caught Pete looking and proudly showed off the contents.

"That looks… great," Pete said. He recoiled when Lucas shook the sack for his benefit, and the mass of writhing crawfish, with their many tiny scrabbling legs, was set into twitching motion.

"Aww, don't be scared. They don't bite. See? Wanna hold one?"

"I'm good."

"No, really, they're harmless—"

"Lucas," Jack said sternly. He stared until Lucas left, then said, "Well, I don't know what to tell ya. There's no driving in that storm. For all we know, the road could be washed out, or we could be carried off. We'll just have to wait it out, and it's gonna get dark soon. Y'might need to stay the night. The good news is we've got plenty of room. We'd be happy to have ya."

"We appreciate your hospitality," Andre said.

Jack nodded. "You'll have to excuse me. I need to check on Lucas, make sure he doesn't mess things up. We'll talk later." He left through the double doors, and Pete and Andre were alone.

They retreated to the corner so Andre could give Shreveport an update. It was a cozy nook, where a model ship sat on a low cabinet. Pete gazed out the window at the rainswept roundabout beyond the porch while Andre made the call.

"They've all left, huh?" Pete said when he finished leaving the message.

"There wasn't anyone earlier either."

"Seriously? Is McNeely just jerking us around?"

"I don't think so."

Pete shuffled his weight, scratched his cheek. "Who are you calling now?"

"Just checking my messages."

Clancy had called. He sounded sheepish, saying he was feeling better. He'd found a motel in Dularge near the diner where they had lunch. A decent enough place, he said. They'd agreed to set aside two other rooms. He left a phone number. Andre relayed the information to Pete.

"Where the hell is Dularge? Ah, never mind."

Andre tried calling the motel, but Clancy wasn't there. He left a message with the front desk.

The stairs creaked, and a young woman peered over the railing at them before coming down with a spring in her step and a big smile. Lean and soft-featured, with a thick mane of hair. She introduced herself as Mia.

It was nice to have new people around, she said. Up close, she was bloodless, all rubbery curves, unlike her younger siblings. She had even white teeth, like a doll's. She'd moved back in with her folks last year, but she still hadn't gotten used to living in the country. "Some folks miss the place where they grew up, I get homesick for Dallas. Go figure."

"I hear ya," Pete said.

Mia smiled at him, and Andre wondered if there were bones under her skin. "Have we met? You look kind of familiar."

"No, I don't think so. Someone like you, I'd definitely remember."

"Seriously, though. You look really familiar. Are you sure we haven't met? You're not an actor?"

Pete went to say no, but she stopped him. "Wait wait wait, don't tell me." She stared intently at him, biting her lip, then let out a frustrated groan. "God, it's driving me nuts. I swear, I never forget a handsome face."

Jack's voice came through from the kitchen. "Where'd those two run off to? And where's Mia? Mia?"

"Coming," Mia called back. "I'd better go before daddy gets mad." She headed for the kitchen at a jog, shooting them a smile over her shoulder.

"Damn," Pete said under his breath.

Andre moved to follow, but Pete stopped him. "What would you give her?"

Andre gave him an incredulous look. "What?"

"What would you give her?"

"Oh, for the love of—"

"Don't be such a fag. Just think like a man for a second. With your other head."

"Excuse me?"

"Chrissakes. You know, with your dick."

"I know what that means—"

"Come on. Out of ten."

Andre let out a breath, spread his hands. "I don't know. Five."

"Five? Are you serious?"

"Four?"

"Jesus, Andre. She's at least a seven. Maybe seven point five if she smiles with her mouth closed."

"You're unbelievable. Just keep your mind on the job."

"Hey. I let you drag me out here to this shitshow. Just let me have this one little thing, okay?"

And you just remember how you got into this fucking mess in the first place. But Andre bit it back, gestured to the doorway. "After you."


	3. Chapter 3

Marguerite served the gumbo straight from the pot, ladling heaping spoonfuls over steaming rice. Andre offered to help, and she gently but firmly sat him back down. Where she passed, she left a smell of flowers, and when she finally took a seat at the end of the table, the flush on her cheeks wasn't all from the excitement. She'd put on rouge, and done her hair up in a bun. She was wearing a different dress.

"You look good, Mrs. Baker," Andre said.

"Why, thank you, cher."

"Hmm," Jack said, eyeing Marguerite's getup. Then, he said, "Haven't seen you wear that thing in years. I thought you said it's too showy for church."

"Good thing this ain't church then, eh?" She turned to the old woman who sat to her right. Someone had wheeled her in, but no one had introduced her. She still hadn't moved. Marguerite gently took her hand from where it lay limp on the armrest, then held out her other hand to Andre.

"Would one of you like to say grace?" Jack said.

"I'd love to," Pete said before Andre could decline.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Andre squeezed his hand in warning, and Pete looked over at him nonchalantly—I've got this.

As he lowered his head, Andre caught Mia smiling across the table at Pete, her clean white teeth like square little chiclets. Sagging between Zoe and Marguerite, Granny Baker stared at him, her eyes set deep in her withered face. He quickly looked down.

"Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we're about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ, our Lord." Pete spoke softly, with surprising sincerity. "And bless the Baker family for their generosity and the warmth of their kindness. Amen."

"Amen."

Andre looked up in time to see the shit eating smile on Pete's face.

"Marguerite said you came down on business," Jack said. "Something about a TV station?"

"Yes sir," Pete said, "we're from KSHG. Up in Shreveport—"

"I've got it," Mia said. She looked around at the others, beaming. "Sewer Gators. The paranormal show?"

"Hmm," Jack said.

Mia tried to mimic Pete's serious tone on camera. "Tonight, on Sewer Gators— right?"

"Glad to see you're finally on the same page as the rest of us," Lucas said around a mouthful of gumbo. "Bravo." A long stare from his father silenced him.

Mia didn't seem to notice. "You're the host. Your clothes threw me off at first—"

"My clothes," Lucas said.

"—but it's like I said." She leaned in. "I never forget a face. You're even more handsome in person. Taller, too."

"Now, honey," Jack said, "that's enough. Let the man eat."

Mia went quiet, but she continued smiling shyly at Pete.

If she only had eyes for Pete, Andre's undivided attention was on the gumbo. Chewy chunks of chicken and andouille—real andouille—and tender shrimp in there with the neat little dice that made up the holy trinity, and the okra slices with their fun little seeds. Warm and seasoned just right. It was hard not to rudely wolf it all down like he used to eat at Grandmère's, especially with Granny Baker there with her own gumbo sitting untouched in front of her. The Bakers went on eating and chatting like she wasn't there. Marguerite watched over their little congregation like a proud mama cat.

"It's so nice having company over," she said. "Y'all gonna be staying in Dulvey long?"

"Just a couple days," Pete said. "We're not actually filming yet, just scouting out locations, finding sources. Preliminary stuff. It's an ongoing process."

Mia shuffled in her seat. She'd only been picking at her food. "What's the episode about? Or is it still a secret?"

"Ah—" Pete glanced at Andre, then said sheepishly, "We were hoping you could help us out in that regard. You know this area a heck of a lot better than we ever will. Local legends, the history of the town…"

"If there's one thing we've got plenty of, it's history," Marguerite said. "Centuries' worth of history. Did you know it wasn't all that long ago that Dulvey had its very own conjure woman?"

"Ohh, y'all're in for a good one," Lucas said, sitting up in his seat. "Tell 'em, mama. Tell 'em about Mama Cecile."

Marguerite was happy to oblige.

It all started with an escaped slave. Rounded up with other Acadians after the sacking of the Bay of Fundy, she was forced to board a ship bound for the plantations of Georgia and a life in shackles. But an unexpected storm swept into the coast, and the ship never made it to its destination.

Weeks later, the Cecile ran aground not far from here, crewed and captained by the dead. There wasn't a soul left alive on board. No one except that escaped slave. She took the ship's name, Cecile, as her own, and made her home in the bayou, living off the land.

As more and more Cajuns arrived from France and England, Dulvey was born. Mama Cecile, as she was known then, kept her distance from the townspeople, but those in need always found their way to her doorstep. She knew rootwork—conjure she used to protect or to harm, or send an enemy packing in a hurry. But she only ever meted out what was deserved.

Reclusive as she was, Mama Cecile could never turn away a soul in need. And that big heart of hers was what got her in the end.

One dark night, under a moonless sky, a woman knocked on Mama Cecile's door. Terrified, exhausted, bleeding. A slave from this very plantation. She had stolen from the kitchen. When the master caught her, he flew into a rage, and sent the dogs to chase her down when she ran.

Mama Cecile agreed to shelter her.

When the master and the overseer and the other men from the plantation came to claim the girl, Mama Cecile refused them entry. Three times, they asked her to give up the girl, promising to leave Cecile in peace. Promising a handsome reward for her cooperation. Three times, she refused, warning them not to cross the brick dust on her threshold.

In defiance of the conjure woman's warning, the men broke down the door and came in—first the master, then the overseer, and the other men. They dragged both women out of Mama Cecile's house. For her insolence, Mama Cecile was brutally murdered alongside the slave girl, their bodies thrown in the bayou.

But Mama Cecile would have the last word. Days later, the master fell ill. He suffered horribly, bedbound, the flesh melting from his bones as he wasted away. Then, the same sickness took the overseer, and the men who had participated in the murders. One by one, the master's family fell to Mama Cecile's final curse.

"Tell 'em about the hanging tree, mama," Lucas said, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

"Lucas," Jack said. "Mind your manners."

"She always skips over the best part—"

"That's enough."

Marguerite broke the silence. "More tea, Andre?"

"Thank you, ma'am. The gumbo's delicious."

"Wish I had two stomachs," Pete said eagerly.

Marguerite chuckled. "That can be arranged, cher. Oh, you city boys and all your smooth talkin'. But I'm glad to hear it. There's no greater satisfaction in life than cooking for others, and no greater reward than knowing they enjoyed what you made."

"Would've been better with the crawfish," Lucas said under his breath.

The smile fell from Marguerite's face.

"All I'm sayin' is—" Lucas said.

A slam rattled the cutlery. Jack's fist on the table. He spoke in a low, cold voice. "Your mama spent hours slavin' away in the kitchen to make this meal. The least you can do is show her a little gratitude." He leveled Lucas with a stare. "Thank your mother for the gumbo tonight."

A long moment of silence, then Lucas said, "Thanks for the gumbo, mama."

"You look at your mother when you speak to her, boy."

Andre sat very still, doing his best scarecrow impression. Across the table, he saw Zoe doing the same, eyes down, fidgeting with the tablecloth.

"Thank you for the gumbo."

"You're welcome, Lucas."

They finished the meal in silence. Rain hit the side of the house in a hail of pebbles. It was dark outside. There was a flicker of motion from Mia's corner; she gave Pete a sideways glance through her eyelashes as she took a sip of tea. After a moment, she sank down on one elbow, watching him openly and playing with her hair, a small smile on her lips.

Andre looked over at Pete and saw him smile back. Then, he saw Jack look over at Mia from where he sat next to her at the other end of the table. Jack frowned. Andre gave Pete a hard elbow in the ribs. A sharp exhale, and Pete turned to him, silently forming a four-letter word. Andre pretended not to notice.

"May I be excused?" Lucas said stiffly.

"Clear your place first, then you may go," Jack said.

Lucas picked up his dishes and went to the kitchen. When he went to leave, Andre heard him pause at the door like he wanted to slam it, but then he left quietly.

Still frowning, Jack lit a cigarette. Pete was quick to fish out his own pack and follow suit. Andre watched his eyes close as he took a deep drag. The cherry glowed, the air turned smoky, and he told himself he wasn't jealous.

Marguerite and Zoe went to clear the table, and Andre got up to help, eager for something to do. He picked up Pete's plate, and there was a rasping inhale from across the table. In a thrill of fear, he quickly turned and carried the dishes to the sink. He didn't look now, and hadn't properly seen then, but out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen Granny Baker sit up like a puppet pulled up by the strings. She'd been sniffing the air.

* * *

Down the hall and through a pair of heavy doors was a deep dark entrance hall. Some of the lights were on, but it didn't feel that way. They barely illuminated the paintings on the wall—a burning ship, a drowning sailor with a twisted face—and the circle of chairs at the center of the room, huddled around the campfire glow of a lamp.

As they crossed the floor to the other side, Andre glanced up to where the stairs met at the second floor mezzanine. The high ceiling and the dark chandelier. The strange ceiling patterns. The house looked skeletal. The wind howled outside, and the lights flickered, lamps lit inside a giant's ribcage.

Marguerite gave them a quick tour of the living room. The bookshelves caught Andre's attention. Dark wood, heavy looking. The original plantation owners were fond of reading, Marguerite explained. The shelves dated all the way back to the antebellum days.

"Not the books, mind you," she said, "But you go ahead and pick something out if you like."

"What's that out there?" Pete said, motioning out the bay window. A gravel path led up to an outbuilding a short walk away from the house.

"Oh, that? That's Jack's workshop. It's where he builds his boats and stores his odds and ends. He used to work out of the garage, but the noise— Lord. Oh, that reminds me. I need to show y'all my vegetable garden. You comin', Andre?"

Andre set down a book on maritime history. "Right behind you, ma'am."

The rain was still coming down steadily when they stepped out onto the veranda. A chilly, earthy wind picked up, raising the hairs on Andre's arms. In the porchlight, Marguerite pointed out an indistinct patch of tangled vegetation—peppers, okra, cucumbers, she said.

There were trees out there, rustling in the dark. Hundreds of acres of abandoned sugarcane fields reclaimed by the woods until the trees started encroaching in on the twenty five acres of the estate proper. Not long after Mama Cecile, disease took the sugarcane fields. The plantation never recovered, and was eventually sold off at a fraction of its original value.

"What killed the crops?"

"Who."

"You don't mean the witch?" Pete said. "Mama— Mama…?"

"Mama Cecile. Yes, that's what the stories say. They say she salted the land, made it so nothing would ever grow again."

Andre was reminded of the old Cajun's words. The half-dog, half-girl put in the ground under a dead tree.

"You sure about that?" Pete said. "Your garden looks like it's thriving."

"Oh, I have my ways," Marguerite said.

"That thing your son said back there during dinner— What was it? Something about a hanging tree?"

Marguerite waved that away. "Don't pay Lucas any mind. He ain't got a clue what he's talking about." She led them back inside, careful to lock the doors.

As he watched her turn the key in the lock, Andre felt a cold prickle run up his back. There was something watching him. He waited as long as he dared, then looked up. Nothing but darkness and blurry motion behind the glass. He couldn't make anything out.

Marguerite and Pete were starting up the stairs. Andre moved to follow, but hesitated. Up there at the far end of the mezzanine, the waxy old woman stared at him from the railing in silence, folded neatly into her wheelchair. At least he thought it was her. It could've been a mannequin. How could she have gotten up there?

Pete spoke up, and Andre jumped.

"Hey, don't fall behind, Boudreaux."

Feeling foolish, Andre jogged up the wide steps after them. When he reached the top, Granny Baker had left the room.

Marguerite took them out into the shelter of a veranda running across the house. There was another window broken here, hastily boarded up. A toolbox had been pushed up against the wall. Marguerite seemed embarrassed. "Don't pay that any mind. Things are always breaking around here. We've called the glass shop, but you know how they are."

Andre paused at the railing. Down below, the driveway and trees vanished into the dark haze of rain beyond the house's light. Somewhere out there in that dark, the oaks sank into the water. The boathouse stood at the water's edge, Marguerite said, but he couldn't see it. He could only just make out the shadow of the guest house. But the wind shook the trees, and a weak light appeared in the bayou, like a distant lighthouse. The rocking trees blotted it out, making the light blink.

"Is that the town?" Andre asked.

Marguerite peered out into the darkness. "The light? That'd be St. Martin's. The good father always leaves a light on at night. It's so his flock can find help if they've lost their way."

Andre stared long and hard at the warm spot of light, but he couldn't imagine a church across the water, much less a whole town. The world beyond the plantation was gone. Maybe it had never existed.

They got back into the house through a rec room, passing a pool table and a fully outfitted bar. All those bottles on the backbar shelf just waiting for an occasion. Beautiful black glass and clear amber liquid.

"If you wanna see the church, Jack can take y'all out there tomorrow. Best not to go wanderin' around at night. It's ill-advised. Meanwhile, I hope you'll join us for a nightcap."

Pete shifted his weight, glanced at Andre.

"Appreciate the offer, ma'am," Andre said, "but I think it's best if we call it an early night."

"Yeah, I'm all played out," Pete said, smiling ruefully. He seemed to realize he was fidgeting with his hands, and quickly stopped.

"That's sensible, cher. I'll show you where you'll be staying."

She led them out the door into the dark hallway, where the narrow stairs came up to the bathroom with the clawfoot tub. Andre instinctively looked down to the end of the hallway, where he'd seem Granny Baker, but she wasn't there.

They followed Marguerite to that end of the long hallway. The passage took a sharp left past rain-washed windows, and became windowless as it wound deeper into the house. The ceiling was just a bit too high, Andre realized. Light didn't reach all the way up to the top, like something could scrabble along with you over your head, just out of sight.

They'd come back around to the entrance hall. A slice of the mezzanine was visible from the doorway. Marguerite stopped at a closed door, and switched the lights on inside. Lying on a rug at the center of the room was a stuffed gator. Big, fluffy, and green. The floor was checkered and scuffed, an ambiguous beige like the curtains and the rest of the house. But the wallpaper was blue and covered with gold stars. It looked like a kid's room.

A bed had been pushed up against the wall in the far corner, next to where three trophies were shelved.

"I see you've noticed our Lucas' trophy collection," Marguerite said, coming back from closing the windows. "He's ever so proud of them. There's just the one bed in here, I'm afraid. Will you boys be able to get by?"

"We'll be fine," Pete said.

"Good. I'll get y'all another pillow."

When Marguerite left, Pete said, "Look at these. Second place, third place, honorable mention."

"Smart kid."

"Not smart enough." Pete turned to the big stuffed gator and laughed. "Hey, would you look at that. Our very own mascot." He tried to pick up the scuffed toy, letting go with a grunt. "Wow, this thing filled with rocks or something?"

Andre watched him sit down on the gator, then start lightly bouncing up and down on it. "Cut it out. There's stuffing coming out of the seams already. You'll break it."

Pete stopped bouncing and looked up at him. "You wanted all black in your cradle as a baby, didn't you."

Lucas spoke up from the doorway. "Y'all like my room?"

"Jesus." Pete startled up off the gator.

"Didn't mean to scare ya," Lucas said with a smile. He came into the room, straightening one of the trophies from where Pete had moved it. "Heard mama say the old man's takin' y'all out on the bayou tomorrow." He took a quick step towards Pete, and Pete shrank back with a frown. "Y'know, I— I know the area like the back of my hand. If y'all want scares, I know all the best spots. And I mean the best."

"Yeah?" Pete said, taking a step back.

Lucas followed. "You bet your sweet ass I do. And I'll show 'em to ya. If I can come with, I mean. Heck, we can ditch the old man altogether. He can be such a stick in the mud, y'know? Stuck in his ways, and always throwin' his damn weight around. He don't understand technology, not like we do. And I'm pretty good with a boat, so you'd be in safe hands."

There was something a bit off about Lucas now that Andre was seeing him up close. He bared his teeth in a constant nervous grin, stretching the skin over his gaunt face. His eyes were pale in a way that made his pupils two small holes. He looked like he was trying to hold them as wide as they could go short of tearing his eyelids.

Pete folded his arms. "Appreciate the offer, but we're still waiting on our cameraman. We can't really do anything without him."

"Maybe I could help," Lucas said eagerly, tripping over his words. "I— I— I've done some work with a camera. I could stand in for your guy until he gets here. If ya like, I mean."

"Uh, we're talking something a little bigger than a camcorder here. And a helluva lot more complicated."

"I'm a fast learner. C'mon, just gimme a chance. You won't—"

Lucas cut himself off as Marguerite came back into the room, carrying a rolled up blanket and a pillow, which she handed to Andre. "Lucas, don't bother these gentlemen. Leave them be."

Lucas' smile faded. "We were just talkin', mama."

Marguerite looked over the room. "Looks like you're all set. You know where the bathroom is. If y'all need anything tonight, I'll be right across the balcony."

She smiled when they thanked her, and left them with Lucas. He stood there, watching them expectantly.

Pete cleared his throat. "Listen, it's kinda late…" When Lucas made no move to leave, his wide eyes fixed on him, Pete squirmed a little and added, "Don't get your hopes up or anything, but I mean, if you wanna help out… yeah, maybe. Sure. We'll see—"

Beaming, Lucas blurted out, "Thank you. Oh man, you ain't gonna regret this, I promise you that. We're gonna make a great team." Lucas went to pat Pete on the shoulder, but batted air when Pete moved away.

"Uh-huh."

"Hey," Lucas said, shuffling a little closer, "have y'all ever found a dead body? While filming, I mean. Like a rotten corpse."

"Not really, no."

"How about in general?"

"Uh-uh."

"I mean something real gruesome." Lucas licked his lips, glanced down. "Y'know, a couple years back, I was out on the bayou, and I saw this thing on the bank. Looked like a dead coon. Fur all dirty, covered in flies. But I got a little closer to get a better look, and it was still alive. Weak and whimperin', hurt real bad where I couldn't see. I went to go pick it up and turn it over, and it fell into pieces. Right in my hands. Just fell into pieces." He looked down at his outstretched hands, then back up at them, and blurted out a laugh. "Gave me a damn fright."

"Wow," Pete said. He shot Andre a quick look. Help me.

"We can talk about all this in the morning," Andre cut in, stepping closer. "We've got a big day tomorrow. Let's all get some rest."

Lucas nodded in agreement. He still made no move to leave, absently scratching his cheek. A moment later, he brightened and said, "Oh right, you're sleepin' in here." He pulled his mouth into a grin. "Well. Sleep tight, fellas. Don't let the mudbugs bite." He wiggled his fingers at Pete.

"Yeah," Pete said.

Still smiling, Lucas retreated out the door. His footsteps stopped in the hallway, and didn't move off, leaving an uneasy void of sound. Pete and Andre stared at the open doorway for a moment, then Andre walked over and shut the door.

Pete collapsed back on the bed, shielding his face with an arm. When Andre came over, Pete said, "Jesus fuck, I take it all back. Clancy's not so bad."

"Glad you feel that way," Andre said. He set the bundle down on Pete, then checked his voicemail. Predictably, nothing from Shreveport, but Clancy had left a short message about a couple missing polaroids he'd left in the van. Don't let Pete throw them out, please, he'd said. Uh, anyway, you have a good night. See you tomorrow, man.

"Move over," Andre said. Pete didn't budge, so Andre squeezed out a spot to sit and tried calling the motel again. Nothing.

"What the fuck is up with that guy?" Pete said. He pushed the bundle off to the side, gave Andre a look. "Is it just me, or did his mom make it sound like he was a kid? And then he shows up and he's some kinda psychotic, googly-eyed manchild. I mean, that fucking raccoon story? What the fuck was that about?" He sagged back down, stared at the starry ceiling. "I can still feel those tiny legs all over me. Fuck those things."

"Hey, when in Rome."

"And what the hell was that at dinner? I thought that guy—the dad—I thought he was gonna stab someone with his spoon." He paused. "Dad's a violent psychopath with serious anger management issues, mom's delusional. Then there's Village of the fucking Damned over there and her manchild brother who probably taxidermies and ass rapes people for fun. Not necessarily in that order. And Granny? I'm fairly certain she's dead. Just rotting at the dinner table, no big deal, don't mind me. Am I the only one who's got a problem with that? At least Mia—"

"Be nice. We're guests here." Pete groaned, and Andre added, "Or at least pretend to be nice. Just play along. We'll be outta here before you know it."

"Yeah," Pete said. "At least we have a solid lead. What'd I tell you, huh? Voodoo-doodoo shit, plantation ghosts—the works. Called it. Told you I got a nose for a good story."

"You're a real dyed-in-the-wool journalist, Pete."

"That's anchor to you, Andrew."

"Isn't that what I said?"

At least Pete was now smiling. Andre looked at him for a moment as he lay stretched out on the bed, gray and unshaven, and said, "You can't take up the whole bed."

"Just watch me. Hey— hey, whoawhoawhoa, no shoving. This bed ain't big enough for the both of us, pard. Someone's gotta rough it out on the floor, and it's not gonna be me."

"Really. And why's that?"

"See this face? It's gotta be in front of the camera tomorrow. I can't look like shit. Whereas you always—"

"Gee, thanks."

"You're welcome. Besides, I don't sleep with guys. No offense—to each his own, right? But I'm not into waking up to some guy groping me."

"And you think I am?"

Pete shrugged with his mouth.

Andre scoffed and moved his things to the ground. "Couldn't pay me enough."

"What?" Pete sat up, gave him an offended look. "Seriously? You don't want this?"

"This joke was long in the tooth ten years ago."

"Hey, I'm not the one who got all queered up by booze, okay? Just calling it as I see it."

Andre said nothing. He heard Pete shifting around and getting comfortable, so he crossed over to have a look through the curtains. The rain had stopped. The air outside was cool and still with rising moisture, and parted like a heavy curtain. Light sank into the darkness and disappeared. He imagined his voice wouldn't carry. Any screams would be trapped and swallowed by the fog.

"Andre," Pete said.

Andre looked over. Pete met his eyes and pointed up to the far corner of the room. Above the desk, set into the starry ceiling, was a closed trapdoor.

"You see that?"

Andre moved under the trapdoor, looking up. In the silence, a distant dog barked. "It's just the attic."

"An attic trapdoor in a kid's room. That's not creepy at all."

Andre didn't answer. He looked at the trapdoor, imagining the black space behind it stretching out above their heads, then casually backed up to the bed. It didn't feel right to turn his back to it.

The curtains stirred over the open window. Grandmère used to warn about that. You couldn't sleep with an open window, she said. It let in bad dreams, or worse—the rougarou would slip in while you slept. It would stand over your vulnerable body, snorting in the dark like a bull.

Andre closed the window.

* * *

Thoughts on the Baker family, the Sewer Gators, Cajun cuisine? Any predictions or theories, things you wanna see happen? If you liked this chapter, tell your friends, leave a comment, and I'll see you all next week.


	4. Chapter 4

They talked quietly after lights out. In the dark, their thoughts wandered aimlessly—news, sports, X-Files. The disfigured, limbless woman under the bed. An inhuman wailing thing buried alive under a baseball diamond. The boss no one else realized was a monster. All that talk and Pete's slow, sleepy voice left the beginnings of a shiver tickling Andre's spine. There was a deep, dark space next to him under the bed. He didn't look.

Andre lay staring up at the ceiling long after Pete fell asleep. From his spot on the floor, the starry sky was cavernous, too deep. Creaks and shudders ran through the house, and it never seemed to settle. Every now and then, he could hear rhythmic metal squeaking out in the hallway—Granny Baker stalking up and down the house in her wheelchair, looking for people out past curfew. Somewhere in the house, the grandfather clock chimed the hour.

Moving slowly so as not to wake Pete, Andre felt around for his notebook. He wrote loosely across the page, feeling his way in the dark.

Growing up in Acadia, there had always been stories. Stories belonging to no one, that had been repeated and altered over generations. Stories lived down here in a way they just didn't further inland, like they'd put down roots in the bayou and had drunk deep for centuries. There was no frantic activity down here to dam the bayou on its lazy, winding slide to the coast, nothing to drown out the history of the place. In this kind of hazy quiet, the world trapped under glass, a person might start to believe they could hear ghosts if they listened in just the right place.

The night they got their Dulvey lead, Pete had gone off on one of his benders. The bar had called the emergency contact out of his wallet, asked Andre to come pick him up off the curb. On the drive back, he let Pete doze and stole orange freeze frames in between the lights. Chewed up and spat out, worn out in the wash, held together with booze and nicotine. A sorry fucking sight with his head leaned into the window, but there was something rare about him. Crossing the city could've taken forever. That would've been okay.

He'd shared his findings when they got back. Pete was too strung out to sleep—too stubborn to even try—and listening to the sound of the keyboard seemed to calm him. He was quiet for once, watching with half-closed eyes from the couch while Andre trawled the web for the town that wasn't on any map. A throwaway post on a dead messageboard led to a webpage filled with erratic gibberings. A radio station that played the devil's word, a cataclysm that had destroyed Dulvey, some kind of horror in the bayou that had taken dozens.

Schizophrenic bullshit, Pete called it. There'd be nothing at the bottom of that rabbit hole, just like the tunnels under LSU or Lake Pontchartrain. Sixteen episodes in, for fuck's sake. They'd struck out. When will you ever learn? There's nothing out there to find, no mysteries to solve, and the harder you try, the more pathetic you look. You think you catch your Cajun werewolf, and that's gonna turn everything around? You think they care?

He'd gone quiet then, out of breath, helpless and angry, and Andre had said, I care.

The squeaking of Granny Baker's wheelchair came back around the corner from the mezzanine. Andre stopped writing and waited for the sound to move past their door in the direction of the rec room like she had a dozen times before. Hunched, her skeletal arms working furiously, with an intensity to her no old person was ever meant to possess. Her eyes too bright in her dead face like a cataract freshly removed by a surgeon.

She came squeaking to their door and stopped. Andre held very still, listening to the void behind the door. Irrationally, he imagined her rising from the wheelchair on her brittle, twisted limbs, craning her neck to press an ear to the door. Checking to make sure they were sleeping. He was suddenly aware of the soft ticking of his watch, and realized he'd been holding his breath, waiting to hear a rattling inhale.

Then, the squeaking resumed and disappeared around the corner.

When he finally fell asleep, they came for him, dragged him thrashing through the tall grass to the water's edge and the hanging tree, its branches clawing up at the moonless, starless sky, as flat and black as cloth, each of the shivering branches ending in a grasping human hand. The bayou was a slick of black oil, its flow reversing in pulses like a heartbeat. Coffins rose from the soft, wet mud, bearing names he knew but couldn't read.

As they put the noose around his neck, he saw the oily water stir, and watched the conjure woman emerge, slowly, inevitably, matted hair over her face, pointing a fleshless finger at him in accusation.

The knocking woke him.

He lay sweating, tangled up in the blanket. The air was thick to breathe, damp and earthy. Too warm, like a hand held over his face. In the dark, the trapdoor was a white square against the starry sky. The world had gone silent. Granny Baker was gone. He wasn't sure Pete was still there, but then he heard him roll over, and go back to sleep.

Someone had opened the window. The colorless curtains swayed, but he couldn't feel the wind. The air was suffocating. From the distance, beyond the flooded oak alley, across the still bayou, the light of St. Martin's cast a fiery square on the opposite wall by the door.

And something had gone terribly wrong. A cold hand clenched around his gut, and a tense prickle ran along his back. He was afraid. Irrationally, naked and honest, like a kid running up the stairs out of the black throat of a basement, or avoiding a mirror in the dark, only there was no relief this time.

There was something in the house. Something had found an open window downstairs and had come inside. It slowly went around the house, leaving a trail of muddy water on the floor, knocking on the doors, going into all the rooms, looking for something. He could hear it moving around downstairs. The floorboards creaked unevenly. Its gait was unnatural, stilted. It dripped as it lurched.

Dread gripped him. He didn't want to see it. He couldn't be here if it came upstairs. His first instinct was to jump up and make a run for the window, even if it was too high up, even if the fall could kill him. He couldn't leave by the door. The moment he got up, the moment he turned the knob, it would know. It would barrel up the stairs, and there'd be nowhere to run.

He tried to get free of the blanket tying him down. His arms were sluggish, unresponsive. They felt heavy, like he'd been drugged. He couldn't keep his eyes open more than a crack, couldn't focus, couldn't get his body to obey. He struggled to pull in enough air. The thing was coming up the stairs now, slowly slouching up to the mezzanine. With a panicked push, he shoved the blanket down.

But he still lay there helpless, weighed down, and Pete— Lying there on the bed, out of sight, Pete was still asleep.

There was a creak on the landing. A drip. He didn't try to keep quiet, didn't whisper. It didn't matter if it heard him. If he could wake Pete up, everything would be okay. They'd make it through this. He sucked in a lungful of air and called out, but it didn't make a sound. His yells turned into choppy gasps as the lurching steps approached the door, Pete, for the love of God, please—

The thing stopped just outside the door. It stood still. Wet drips of rotting vegetation sloughed off and landed on the floor. Then, it knocked.

Toc. Toc. Toc.

Andre's body went cold. His joints locked up. He forgot to run—he couldn't remember how. He lay there and stared away from the door—the thin layer of wood between him and the thing he desperately didn't want to see—forced his eyes to stay open, willed the thing to leave. Don't open the door. Don't open the fucking door. Just leave.

There was a long, horrible silence. It was listening, its head craned against the door on its too long neck, waiting for him to let it in. Andre didn't move, didn't make a sound, pretended he wasn't there. But the thing knew. The knocking started again, softer, more frantic, rattling together like rain or fingertips rapping on a window, and instead of stopping, the knocks started up the other side of the door, climbed up to the odd angle where the wall met the ceiling.

Then, the starry sky began to creak and shift as the thing moved into the attic. It wandered in the dark in slow, stumbling jerks, weaving across the ceiling. With a start, Andre realized it was searching for the trapdoor.

He struggled, choking in a thin trickle of air, trying to thrash free of the blanket. He had to get up. Had to warn Pete. They needed to leave. Coming here had been a mistake, and they were going to pay. He jerked one arm free, clumsily slammed his fist against the bed. The impact jolted him down to the elbow, but made no sound. He raised his arm and hit the bed again. Pete didn't stir.

He tried to will himself up, tried to shift his weight and roll up to a sit so he could grab Pete and shake him awake, or hide against the wall with him under the covers where it was safe, but he couldn't move—

A drop hit the floor with a loud tap.

The trapdoor was open.

Andre turned away and squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't look. There was something wrong about the thing. The way it moved, it was twisted, unnaturally deformed. The thought of being near it, being forced to see its face, made his skin break out into terrified prickling. The world beyond the room was gone—there was nothing left but them and it. He wanted to cry, but kept still and silent, playing dead. He held onto a stupid, childish hope. You close your eyes, pretend not to see, pretend to sleep, and maybe—if you're quiet, if you play your part right—it'll leave you alone.

He heard it come down the ladder, heard it move around the room, lurching, dripping. Muffled steps on the carpet. It knocked softly into the furniture. The smell of decay came off it, bayou mud churned up from where it lay undisturbed for centuries, layers of bodies softened and blurred together.

It stood at the open window, looking out. Gazing at St. Martin's fire burning across the bayou where the land turned to water and the sky was blood. Then, it turned and came over to the bed.

Andre felt the air stir on his skin, and he cringed away. He felt it lean its weight. The bed creaked. Relief turned into a shameful pang, and his stomach went cold. Pete was going to die. Andre didn't move, didn't cry out a warning. He lay there and did nothing. He waited for the screams to start. But there were no screams. The malformed thing that had come from the bayou sat at the foot of the bed in silence. Water continued to puddle on the floor. Each drop struck clearly.

Then, the thing rose and went back up the ladder to the attic, and he realized what the conjure woman had done while he slept. There was someone lying under the sheets. It wasn't Pete.

With a soft groan, it leaned over the edge of the bed and looked at him.

* * *

Andre woke with a start.

The sour needles of panic melted, and he sank back down, pulling in deep breaths. The cool air smelled like damp earth. He shifted, easing his stiff muscles, then pushed the blanket off. The notepad slapped the floor, and he heard the pen roll away. The door was closed. The house was still. The trapdoor was a white square against the starry ceiling. They were alone. But the window was open, the curtains hanging limp.

Moving to a sit, he cast a sideways glance at the bed, suppressing an irrational prickle of anxiety. Pete lay on his side, facing away. Andre couldn't see his face. In the dark, he wasn't sure if that was what Pete was supposed to look like. If it was someone else, if something had taken Pete's place—if it looked like him, but was just a little off, if it smiled just a little wider—would he know the difference?

He stayed still for a moment, listening for his breathing, then reached over and patted his shoulder.

Pete jerked awake, inhaling sharply. "What the f—"

He was warm, breathing. When he rolled over to squint at Andre, his face looked right. It was never not him. He sounded groggy, pissed. "What do you want? What time is it? Jesus, it's four in the— The fuck's wrong with you?"

The relief was overwhelming. Andre wanted to kick himself. He got to his feet, standing still to wait out the dizziness, then moved to the window. It was still dark outside, but he could make out the tops of the trees at the edge of the lawn. Nothing but woods. There was no light on the bayou. The window never faced the oak alley in the first place.

"What are you doing?" Pete hissed.

Andre hesitated, shut the window and latched it. He looked over, expecting Pete to have turned his back on him and gone back to sleep, but found him lying there watching him blearily.

"I opened that for a reason, you know," Pete said.

Andre said nothing. It all seemed so stupid now, his blind animal panic. Turning into a goddamn Judas. He could barely remember what had terrified him so much about the dream. None of it made sense now. He couldn't remember the face he'd seen.

"The fuck's the matter?"

"Nothing. It's okay, just go back to sleep."

Pete gave him an incredulous look. "Why'd you wake me up, then?"

Good thing the lights were off, so Pete couldn't see his face. Andre went back to his spot on the floor and lay down, pretending to sleep. The feverish haze was gone, but his sweat wouldn't dry. It stuck his shirt to his skin. There was a moment of quiet, then Pete grunted and got up, nearly tripping over him in the dark.

"Great, now I gotta take a leak."

While he was gone, Andre listened closely to the house. The air moving outside the window. The spaces between the walls. The black crack of the open door left him uneasy, so he stared at it. It was so quiet it was easy to forget this house had people in it.

Pete's footsteps approached the door, and Andre jumped in spite of himself. Pete crept in and closed the door, then stood peering uncertainly at Andre until he saw Andre was awake.

"I don't wanna hear another goddamn peep," he said. He got back into bed with a groan, shuffled around a bit, and went quiet.

A moment later, he rolled over and said irritably, "Okay. What happened?"

"Nothing. Sorry for waking you."

"Did I snore or something?"

"No."

There was a pause, then Pete said, "It's coming back, huh?"

"It's nothing. Go back to sleep."

"I thought you were over this."

Andre hesitated. "I thought so, too."

Pete propped himself up and looked at him. "You wanna swap?"

"Thanks, but I'm good."

Pete went quiet a moment. Andre heard him lie back down. "Gonna be light soon. Try and get some rest, right? Gonna need my producer to be a hundred percent tomorrow."

"Aren't I always?"

"I mean it. You sure you don't want anything? Glass of milk, bedtime story? Cuddle?"

Andre snorted. "Good night, Peter."

"Night, Andrew."

Andre lay there and watched the sky slowly brighten. A narrow ribbon of light crossed the ceiling and stretched down the wall. When it touched the door, he closed his eyes.

A blink later, knocking woke him. It took him too long to regain his bearings, figure out why he was on the floor. It was bright out, a gray morning, and Marguerite Baker was waiting outside the door.

"Boys? Y'all decent in there?"

Andre answered, and Marguerite came in with their clothes, clean, dry, and folded. She gave their state of disarray a look of motherly disapproval, and crossed the room to open the curtains. Light flooded the room. Pete groaned and squirmed deeper into the covers, hiding his face.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead. The Lord's brought us a brand new beautiful day. We gotta start it off right. Here are your clothes, washed and pressed. I expect to see y'all downstairs in a bit. No skipping breakfast in this house. Peter?"

"Yes, ma'am," Pete mumbled. He made a big show of trying to get up, but as soon as Marguerite left, he sunk back into bed and went back to dozing.

"Hey, you heard the lady," Andre said. He tossed Pete's clothes at him.

"Five more minutes," Pete said into the pillow.

Andre gingerly stretched his shoulders. It was a relief to change back into his own clothes, and the room looked completely different in the gray light—roomy, every corner exposed. The gator lay across the rug, where Pete had stumbled into it last night while trying to get to the door. Just a harmless kid's room. He could hear people moving around downstairs, muffled talking.

Blanket folded, he scooped the notebook up from the floor, hunted around for the pen. It had rolled under the bed. He reached in without hesitation, then went to the window, flipping through his notes from last night. A few messy but intelligible pages trailed into incoherence on the last page. What he could make out unsettled him. He tore the page out, opened the window.

The air outside was a muggy curtain, thickened by a hanging fog the distant sun couldn't burn off. It hugged the ground, turned the woods into vague, knobby skeletons. There were more dead trees than he remembered seeing on the way in yesterday.

He hadn't seen the kudzu, either. Some time during the night, a matted carpet of vines had surged up the side of the house from the veranda and latched onto the windowsill, leaves spread, showing off purple flowers. Slender tendrils lay bunched up outside the window like phone wires, tentatively reaching up.

Years ago, when he visited Grandmère's for the last time, he'd found the little house dilapidated. The roof had collapsed. The porch had been scavenged for scrap wood. The kudzu that had always blanketed one wall had wrapped around the roof and turned the house into a green hill with black holes underneath, where windows used to be.

And the vegetable patch she loved so much was gone. Clenching vines had turned the guard into a lush graveyard where nothing else grew. Only soft bumps remained to mark what lay buried underneath.

Andre reached out and brushed the tendrils off the windowsill. The wood was unpleasantly gritty, and his hand came away covered in a dull red sand. He rubbed it between his fingers. Brick dust. It had been deliberately poured out in a straight line across the windowsill from one side of the frame to the other, blurred out in places where he and Pete had touched it.

He heard Pete moving around, and thought about talking it over with him, but Pete wouldn't understand. Where the brick dust had been laid down, where the line hadn't been broken, the vines hadn't crossed the threshold. Almost as if they couldn't.

* * *

Any predictions or theories? I'd love to hear what your thoughts. If you liked this chapter, tell your friends, leave a comment, and I'll see you all next week.


	5. Chapter 5

Butter sizzled in the skillet, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the hallway. The radio was on in the kitchen, drumsticks on metal tapping out a beat. My grandma and your grandma, sitting by the fire. No sign of Granny Baker, though; there was a conspicuous gap at the table for her wheelchair. Maybe all that wandering last night had finally worn her out. But Mia was there with Lucas. She picked an apple out of the fruit bowl on the dining table, looking faded and delicate in the morning light.

Seeing her, Pete pulled Andre aside, away from the doorway. "Fuck, she's a soft eight right now." He glanced down at himself, looked at Andre. "What do you think?"

Andre reached out and straightened his collar.

"I feel like shit. Do I look like shit?"

"As devastatingly handsome as ever. Just try and keep it in your pants."

"You kidding me? I'm a fucking paragon of professionalism."

Mia lit up at their approach, breaking into a big smile that showed off her perfect doll's teeth. "Pete. Good morning. It's so good to see you again—both of you."

Lucas snorted. He didn't look up from his Game Boy.

"Morning, Miss Baker," Pete said. He gave Lucas a nod. The lines of his body relaxed, quiet, confident, polite—every bit the good ol' boy he wasn't.

Mia tilted her head, looking flustered. Her gaze lingered on Pete. "Call me Mia, please."

Andre turned to go say hello to Marguerite and Zoe, but Lucas jumped up very suddenly and was in front of him, talking excitedly in a hushed voice. "Andre. Can I call ya Andre? Listen, I've been thinkin' over that stuff we discussed last night, and—"

"I hope you boys brought your appetites," Marguerite called from the pass through window. "I'm makin' pain perdu. Andre, I could use a hand in here, cher. Zoe, go get your father."

Andre stepped aside to let Zoe pass. Marguerite had just lowered two wedges into the skillet. Soaked in milk and eggs, the bread sizzled softly in the butter. She opened the oven and pulled out a tray of warm pain perdu, each slice fried to a deep golden brown. She set it on the pass through counter.

"Would you kindly sprinkle this over the pain perdu? Give 'em a nice dusting, like a little snowstorm in June. Go on, don't be shy about shakin' that sieve. Y'won't hurt it."

Still groggy, Andre shook the cinnamon and powdered sugar out, careful to cover each slice evenly. The thick smell of vanilla and butter made his stomach turn unpleasantly. Deep down, he knew it was supposed to smell and taste delicious, but it didn't inspire as much appetite in him as he'd have liked. He glanced up and saw Zoe out the window, presumably headed for the workshop.

Lucas leaned on the counter and watched him work. When a few of the slices were dusted a light brown, he reached over and tried to snag one only for Marguerite to slap his hand away.

"Lucas. Manners."

"But I'm hungry."

"Then have an apple. Your father's been up working for hours. You don't hear him bellyachin' about it. We'll eat together once he and Zoe get back." She came over to check on Andre's progress, giving a satisfied nod. "You'll make a fine sous chef. But you look exhausted, cher. Did you sleep all right? Funny old house, creaks like old bones some nights. Not to mention some city folk have trouble adjusting to the quiet."

Andre's mind went to Granny Baker, but he thought better of it. "Not at all. The quiet helped."

While Marguerite had her back turned, dipping bread in the batter, Lucas grabbed a slice and bit in. Behind him in the dining room, Mia and Pete stood very close together, chatting. Mia was playing with her hair.

"Must've been a cozy fit," Lucas said, "the two of y'all in my bed. Ha, maybe we can have a sleepover, the three of us. Whaddaya think?"

Pete looked up and met Andre's eyes. Somberly, he shook his head.

"Lucas. If you're gonna act like a child—"

"Aww c'mon, mama. Look—I'm puttin' it back."

Marguerite shook her head, turning back to flip the slices in the pan. Lucas stuffed the rest in his mouth. He shot Andre a look of self-satisfaction, his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk's.

There was a break in the music, and the DJ came on. It was the same voice from yesterday, the one who spoke metallically through a toothy grin. "That was a stunning rendition of Go Tell Aunt Rhody by Dulvey's very own purveyors of that sweet Excello sound, Black Bottle Tree. And you're listening to WSTA, 97.7 FM. Your voice in the bayou." There was a clockwork quality to his speech, like a slow clip sped up, all the mistakes edited out.

"Oh," Marguerite said. "Y'all were asking about St. Martin's. That's him. That's Father Bellamy on the radio."

"He's got an interesting voice," Andre said.

"That he does, our Father Bellamy. Smooth as dark velvet. We've all got our gifts, and the good Lord saw fit to bless him with the gift of words. Oh, there's coffee over there. Lucas can get you a mug. Lucas?"

Lucas sighed and straightened up, slouching around the counter to pick a mug out of a cabinet. When Mia came over to get some coffee, they jostled for space. Lucas gave her a light shove, and she elbowed him hard in the ribs, making him laugh. Mia wasn't smiling anymore. For the first time, her sickly sweet mask slipped, and there was a strange look in her eyes.

Andre quickly looked away. "Where does Father Bellamy broadcast from? The church?"

"I reckon so," Marguerite said. "I've never seen a man more dedicated to his calling. The flood waters couldn't move him. I expect nothing short of the end times could drag him away from St. Martin's. He might sound young, but don't be fooled—he's been in Dulvey far longer than any of us. He's witnessed a great deal."

"I was hoping he might be open to an interview."

"He's a good man, never one to turn away a soul in need of help or answers. Jack can take y'all once this pesky van business is sorted." She wiped her hands, peered out the window with a frown. "What's takin' 'em so darn long gettin' back?"

Lucas perked up, sliding a mug of coffee over to Andre. "I could take 'em, mama."

Marguerite went on frying as if she hadn't heard him.

"We tuned in yesterday," Andre said, "on the way here. He was saying something about a whistler."

"A whistler?" Marguerite echoed.

"I think that's what he said. Someone whistling in the bayou, and to stay away from it. Have you heard anything like that?"

"Mhh, I'm afraid not, cher. Kindly pass me that pain perdu— Lovely. Just look at 'em. You did a fine job. I've got half a mind to keep you on as my assistant. With Lucas, there's hardly anything left to serve at the end. And that's assuming I can even drag him away from his video games. I swear, that boy's addicted."

"Am not."

Andre chuckled, took a sip of coffee. "That's a tempting offer. I'd have to check with my partner."

"What do you say, Peter? Can I steal Andre for my kitchen?"

"Go right ahead, ma'am," Pete said, and Mia laughed.

It was nice. Chicory coffee and casual conversation on a gray morning. Andre hadn't realized how much he'd missed this. The radio seeped in under their voices. The DJ—Father Bellamy, his singsong voice flowing out from his grinning mouth low and even and as smooth as oil, slowly sinking in, an itch burrowing through skin into muscle.

Lucas gave a low whistle. Two-toned, teasing, like a name called in a singsong tone across the playground. When he saw Andre looking, he raised his eyebrows and whistled again. Then, he gave a toothy grin. "That's the whistle, innit? The one ya heard?" He licked his lips, glanced at Marguerite. "He's called the A-tisket Whistler."

"Someone from town?"

"Not exactly. See, no one knows where he's from. Who he is. What he looks like. Hell, they ain't even sure he's human. No one's seen who's doin' the whistling." He leaned closer, his weird eyes fixed on Andre. Unblinking. "But when you're out on the bayou, when you're in just the right place at just the right time, y'might hear that sound in the distance. Never goin' away, never gettin' closer. An-dre. Aaan-dre…"

Andre's eyes started to water from all the staring. He looked off to the side, past Mia's rubbery smile and soft white face. There was movement out the window. Jack went stomping past, followed by Zoe. He looked distracted, hunched over his arm. His sleeve was red with blood. Then, he was out of sight.

"And here's the thing—it's when that sound stops, when you don't hear that whistlin' followin' you anymore— That's when you run like hell. Y'don't want the Whistler seein' ya." The corner of his mouth twitched, an almost smile. There was something off about him. "Y'ever heard the song? Know how it goes?"

"How does it go?"

Lucas' grin widened, and he got an eager light in his eyes. In a low, breathy voice, he recited, "A-tisket, a-tasket, he'll put you in a casket. He'll draw a line around your face—"

"Lucas," Marguerite said sharply, making Andre jump. "Leave the poor man alone. Don't go scarin' him with those stories of yours."

"Aww, come on. I'm just tryin' to help. And they ain't even my stories."

"You can help by setting the table."

Lucas groaned, rubbing his stubbly head. His hairline was receding, After a moment, he said, "Can I take 'em later? Out to the tree— the town, I mean. I can get the boat ready—"

"It's too dangerous."

"It ain't. I know my way around. Besides, dad lets me bait the traps on my own all the time."

"Ask your father, then."

"He's just gonna say no."

As Marguerite slid the last of the pain perdu into the warm oven, the DJ went quiet, leaving the beginnings of a slow, sultry bassline. An older woman singing Blue Bayou, but some of the lyrics were different.

Marguerite let out an appreciative sound. "Oh, I just love this song. It's one of my favorites. Don't that just make you wanna dance?" She did a couple slow steps with an imaginary partner, then held her hand out to him.

Andre chuckled. "I'm not much of a dancer."

"I think I'll be the judge of that," Marguerite said. She swept off her apron, grabbed Andre and led him around the narrow kitchen. It was an awkward shuffle, and they bumped into the counter, knocking over a bottle of hot sauce, but Marguerite only laughed. "You'll get the hang of it. Relax those shoulders—that's it."

They did another hard turn around the kitchen, and Jack was in the doorway, a look of cold fury on his face. Andre stuttered to a stop, pulling away as Jack wheeled Granny into the dining room, shoulders squared.

"It's about damn time," Lucas said. "Can we eat now? I'm starving."

For a brief, horrible moment, Jack stared right at Andre over the rims of his glasses. Then, all the tension left his shoulders and he chuckled, clapping Lucas across his bony back. "Why, hello there, Starving. I'm Dad."

* * *

The four of them went out to the van after breakfast, pushing through the curtain of damp hanging over the bayou. Branches had snapped in the storm and lay across their path. Walking ahead, Jack broke them down with strong kicks and his bare hands. As civil as he'd been at the breakfast table, tension remained just below the surface. He'd snapped at Lucas for sneaking his Game Boy under the table. Jack wasn't bleeding. He'd changed his shirt, but he didn't seem injured at all.

The van was right where they'd left it, sitting at the bottom of the incline in a pool of mud and leaves. Jack didn't hesitate. He went down the muddy slope and waded over to inspect the damage.

Andre cautiously followed, feeling for footholds on rocks and roots on the way down. When he reached the bottom, he glanced up to Pete and saw him hesitate. He instinctively held a hand out to him, but Pete shook his head.

"Kindly pop the hood for me," Jack called. He straightened up with a groan from where he'd been inspecting the wheels. "Gotta make sure no water got in your engine before we try and start her." He adjusted his glasses, gestured to the caked grime. "Water came up pretty high yesterday. Y'all better check inside while you're at it."

The inside of the van had already started to bake in the heat. The windows were fogged over, the seats were damp, and the van stank of rotting vegetation. But at least the equipment appeared to be unharmed.

Pete pushed in next to him and gave a deep, nauseous cough. "Christ, that smells fantastic. Is my stuff dry?"

Andre felt through Pete's bag until he found his spare pack of cigarettes, which he passed over his shoulder to him.

A little water had soaked into the carpeting and trim up front, but the floor was dry in the cargo area. Andre checked the camera for water, and felt the mic softie. Still dry. The lenses, mics, batteries—all safe. He tugged the rain cover over the camera, wrapped the lens in the pink shower cap they called Agnes.

He found the polaroids scattered under Clancy's seat. Safe and dry. He shuffled through. A woman silhouetted in a window with a mug of coffee. A shot of her face, her eyes smiling even with her lips out of frame. The kid had a clear eye for framing. There was a candid of Pete, smoking, looking tired. An exterior shot of the diner in Dularge. And a shot of the wall of missing persons. Half a dozen leaflets shot head on. He looked over the oblivious, smiling faces, and his back went cold.

Mia was among the missing. Same long hair, same soft white dace. Same rubbery smile.

Pete called his name, but Andre didn't move. There was something very wrong about this, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, like he'd forgotten it when he woke up. It gnawed at him. He squinted at the photo in the half light, tried to make out the name on the flyer. It could've been Mia. He couldn't say for sure. But no doubt about the photo—it was her.

A hand on Andre's back, and he jumped, smashing his head on the ceiling.

Pete backed up, hands up. "Whoa, whoa. Jesus." A sharp laugh. "Easy, bud."

Andre caught his breath, bit back a swear. Pete's eyes went down to the photos in his hand, and Andre quickly slid them in his pocket. "Javis. He said he dropped them."

"Uh-huh. You're gonna wanna see this." Pete pushed away from leaning on the door, waiting for Andre to come out. The photo was burning a damn hole in his pocket, but he couldn't risk Jack overhearing. The thought of Pete flirting with a missing woman left a sour, anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The dipstick came out covered in a sickly chocolate milkshake, too much of it, not the color oil was meant to be. The way Jack explained it, water had gotten in, and there was no use trying to start the van.

"I'm gonna have to go back and see if I got the right oil, and enough of it. A filter, too." Jack shut the hood with a bang. He looked grim. Irritated. "If that don't work out, I'll take a trip to town, bring it back here."

"Please don't trouble yourself," Andre said. "If you could give us the number to call a mechanic—"

Jack waved him off. "It's no trouble." He held out his hand. "The keys, if you would, Mr. Doucet."

Something about the look on Jack's face made Andre hesitate, but he took the keys off the chain and handed them over. Jack nodded, clenched them in a meaty fist. Andre stepped aside so Jack could lead the way back up to the road, but Jack didn't move. He looked around at the battered woods, and then he said, "That was a helluva storm yesterday. But there's been worse. Hell, we lived through worse. Two years back, a gale blew a branch clear through our living room window. Nearly hit our Zoe."

"Jesus," Pete said.

"We've been through our share of scrapes, and then some. But we weathered it all. Patched the wall, fixed the windows. Cleaned up the broken glass. The debris. Nothing could ever knock us down for very long."

"You're a resilient bunch."

Jack nodded, his mouth in a thin line. "Point being, we've got us a good thing going here. It's always been the five of us, you see. Sticking it through together. Me and Marguerite, Zoe, Mia…" He glanced up at the road, where Lucas stood waiting. "Even Lucas here. I wouldn't give that up for anything."

Andre wasn't sure he liked where this was going. Even Pete had run out of platitudes. There was a vacuum of sound at the bottom of the hollow. Frogs called, but the sound came from far away. The air was suffocatingly still. And there was no one for miles.

Jack took a step closer. There was a low panther's prowl to the way he moved, predatory and fluid. Controlled. Strong shoulders hunched, keys clenched in his fist. His voice rumbled out of his deep chest. "I would do anything to protect them." He looked from Andre to Pete. "God help the man who tries to come between me and my family. If anything were to happen to my little girls, Lord only knows what I'd do."

Andre swallowed. "You're just looking out for your family. We respect that."

Jack pinned him with a stare, but then his expression softened and he nodded. "I'm glad we understand each other." He moved past them up the slippery incline, called up to Lucas. "We're headin' back."

* * *

Jack didn't say another word on the walk back. He stomped ahead with purpose, while Lucas hung back with them like an enthusiastic puppy, practically treading on their heels. Back at the van, he'd been fascinated by their gear and scrambled down the mud slope to meet them. Offering to help carry the camera, their bags, whatever they needed.

Polite refusal didn't seem to dampen his high spirits. When they got back to the fence, he shot them a grin and patted the jury-rigged gate mechanism. "Y'all like this setup? Put this lil' beauty together myself. Made the intercom from a resistor and a pair of old phones, and the deadbolt came off an old GM that—"

"Lucas," Jack said.

Lucas stopped smiling, and turned away to punch in the code. "Uh, anyway." He swung the gate open, motioning them through.

The grass was damp, the ground soft. Jack headed straight for the workshop on the other end of the property while they moved their things to the house. In the fog, the tall white pillars of the plantation house loomed like the ribs of a derelict. The old oak looked even older and more twisted, its moss touching the ground. The long oak alley vanished into the fog. It was hard to see just how high the water had come, whether it had pushed up into the grounds and stayed.

They stomped the mud off their shoes and entered to a silent, empty house. The hallway was dark, a tight section of gut, and the smell of breakfast lingered in the still air. They were all alone.

Andre tried calling Shreveport again, but it went straight to their answering machine. He left a concise update on the situation, then checked his watch. Knowing Clancy, he wouldn't be up for another hour. Better to let him have his rest. The itch remained to take the polaroid and do something about it, but he had to be careful going forward. He'd have to talk things through with Pete first.

On the way to Jack's workshop, Andre finally got a good look at Marguerite's cherished vegetable patch, lush and green in the gray light. Red where the peppers grew. He caught a flicker of light in the shade of the veranda, light reflected off a mirror hung up by the door. The devil could get tapped looking into that crisp reflection.

Stairs led down from the veranda and followed a gravel path up to the workshop. It was a cross between a barn and a hangar, weathered, its red paint worn a rusty brown. The same shade as the brick dust. The doors had been slid open partway. It was dark inside.

Andre went up to the door and looked in. The place smelled strongly of wood and resin. Part of the space was taken up by workbenches and an unfinished pirogue, sixteen feet by the looks of it. Metal storage shelves receded into the dark at the far end of the workshop. Raw lumber leaned against the wall, tools hung up on hooks.

"Hello? Mr. Baker?" Andre called out. No response. He turned to Lucas and found him standing there with his arms crossed.

Lucas chuckled, made an ambivalent gesture. "Don't look at me. The old man don't want me in there. Says I just get in the way. Then he needs somethin' done on the computer, and all of a sudden, it's Lucas, fix this, Lucas, fix that—"

The air was completely still, but something stirred in the workshop, and a soft knocking came from the back. Toc. Toc. Toc.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Lucas said.

Andre shook his head.

Pete brushed past him and moved into the shade of the workshop. He stepped around the pirogue, stopping in front of Jack's wall of tools. "Jesus. Andre, come take a look at this."

Pairs of thick manacles. Rough to begin with but now deformed by rust, hanging heavy off the wall next to Jack's wrenches and screwdrivers. Pete lifted one of the shackles, and it swung back against the chains with a hard clap. They looked like tetanus just waiting to happen.

"Don't touch that," Andre said.

"Shit… glad I had my shots," Pete said. He looked out at them. "Your old man running some kinda freakshow out here?"

Lucas gave him a stretched grin and shifted his weight. "Ah hell, it ain't like that. We found 'em when we took the old barn down a couple years back. They were just sittin' in a box. Must've been from— Hell, I dunno. They're old."

"And you kept them? Why?"

"Beats the hell outta me. That's a question y'oughta ask the old man. He's the one who wanted 'em so bad."

A door opened in the back, behind the shelves where they couldn't see, and Jack came out. He was empty-handed.

"Speak'a the devil," Lucas said.

"We were just admiring your boat," Pete said.

Jack grunted, moving to the door. His heavy footsteps echoed in the dark rafters. "I ain't got the right oil. No filter, either. I'll drive into town, get some from the shop." When they were all outside, he pulled the door shut with surprising strength. "Lucas, did your mama say if she needed anything from town?"

"I don't remember anything. But hey, I ran out of AAs for my—"

"I believe I was asking what your mother needed." When Lucas didn't reply, he grunted, "I suppose I'll just have to ask her myself."

Lucas moved away and kicked at a tuft of weeds.

Jack was already heading back in the direction of the house when Pete spoke up. "You don't have to go to all that trouble for us. We appreciate everything you've done for us already. It's a helluva lot more than anyone could hope for. Really. Andre and me, we can take it from here."

Jack looked at him. "As I said, it's no trouble." There was a finality to the words, and he started walking away.

"Um… thanks. Need any help? One of us could come with you."

Jack didn't look back. "That won't be necessary."

Lucas called after him, "Dad, can I take 'em out to see Dulvey like you said? I figured since you're gonna be busy, I mean, I could fill in."

"Ask your mama."

"Look, I'll— I'll drive real slow, right? We'll take the longest boat. I'll be careful."

Jack didn't answer, just made a weary gesture—whatever you want—and kept walking.

Lucas turned to them, a huge grin splitting his face. "Whaddaya say, fellas? Y'all ready for the creepiest bayou tour you'll ever experience? I swear, this is gonna be fuckin' amazing."

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Pete said. He cast Andre a sideways glance and shrugged with his mouth.

Lucas let out an excited little whoop. "Whoo-ee, you're gonna get a kick outta this, I guarantee it. We're gonna make a great team." He clapped them both on the back, hard, and this time Pete wasn't quick enough to dodge it. "I'll go get everything ready— don't go anywhere. I mean—" He backed up, stammering, suddenly embarrassed. "Tell ya what, I'll meet you guys over by the boathouse in ten. Oh, and bring the camera. Won't give away too much, but you're gonna wanna get some'a this shit on tape."

* * *

They were halfway to the house when Andre pulled Pete aside. "We need to talk."

Pete looked over in surprise, and then he laughed. "Jesus, those words are fucking terrifying, even coming from you."

"Just take a look at this." Andre got the polaroids out, looked for the wall of posters.

Pete groaned, looking away. "I don't give a fuck about Clancy's third grade art project. I mean, look, whatever—I'm sure it's amazing and creative—"

"No, look." Andre pushed the photo out to him. He tapped Mia's face. "Right there."

Pete frowned at the photo, and then he went quiet. A low hiss escaped him. "Fffuck me—" He snatched the photo out of Andre's hand, stared at it. "Fuck me, is that Mia?"

"It looks like her."

"Fuck." Pete looked at him. "What the hell is this? Is this some kinda joke? You shitting me right now?" He searched Andre's face, processing, then the stare slid off and he headed for the house at a hurried pace.

Andre grabbed him by the arm. "What're you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing?" Pete held up the photo. "I'm gonna go ask her about it. It's probably— some kinda mistake. Some misunderstanding, right?"

"You heard Jack back there. When he said he'd do anything for family, when he said he wouldn't let anyone get in the way, that included Mia."

Pete looked at him, and then he shrugged off his grip, but he didn't move.

"Don't rush into this thing. We don't know what this is yet. It could be something, it could be nothing. We could try to catch her alone, privately ask her. But we need to stay in Jack's good graces. At least while we're stuck here."

Pete shook his head, ran his hand over his face. Andre watched him for a moment, then pulled the polaroid out of his hand and tucked it with the others, straightening a dog ear.

"That creepy old bastard," Pete said. "He's hiding something. There's something weird going on here."

"It's too early to tell."

"Did you— You saw those chains back there? The fucking shackles? A normal person wouldn't have something like that hanging next to their power tools, all right?"

Andre glanced up at the house. There was a flicker up in a second floor window. A curtain moved. And there was a white face behind the glass. With a jolt, he realized Granny Baker sat in the window, looking out at them.

"What the hell else did he shoot?" Pete asked.

"What?"

"Javis. What else did he take pictures of? Is there anything else?"

"There's nothing else."

"Shit."

Lucas appeared from around the corner, looking around. He spotted them and waved enthusiastically before heading their way.

"There's Lucas," Andre said. "Let's keep this between us for now, all right?"

Pete looked away and shifted his weight in irritation. "Fine. Let's go get our stuff."

* * *

Hi everyone, this is your captain speaking. Any theories or predictions? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you liked this chapter, tell your friends, leave a comment, and I'll see you all next week.


	6. Chapter 6

On dead hot summer days, when the bayou was as smooth as glass, you could look off the side of the boat into still water, past columns of hydrilla hanging motionless, all the way to the mud bottom where the sun touched in patches through the trees. On those clear days, you could see the fish dart silver through the water, you knew where to cast your line, and the world looked just a little bit cleaner.

The bayou was a foggy black mirror when they crossed the ramp to the boathouse. The building sat astride the sweep of water among the cypress trees, ungraceful but sturdy. Bringing up the rear, Andre glanced across at the flooded oak alley and the ghost of the plantation house. Silent, still, standing unmoved as it had for hundreds of years.

Inside, a flatback pirogue had been lowered into the water, a trolling motor mounted to the back. Three other boats sat dry on racks, and paddles lined the wall next to crawfish traps. Black water licked at the piers under their feet.

Lucas hopped into the boat, grinning wide. "Your carriage awaits."

As Andre passed Lucas the camera, Pete gave the pirogue a skeptical look. "You sure this thing can hold all of us?"

"Pshh, 'course it can. Hell, me and the old man once—" Lucas cut off, chuckled like he'd figured out a punchline. "Uh, we hauled a gator in once, must've been thirteen, fourteen feet. Probably nine hundred pounds. And you look about—" He squinted up at Pete, sized him up. "Five foot five, five six? Buck ninety?"

"One fifty. Average height for a man of my weight, actually." Pete looked irritated, but got in without complaint and only a slight wobble, and when he got settled between Andre at the bow and Lucas at the rudder, Lucas rocked the boat with a laugh.

"Ah, don't be scared. You're in safe hands with Cap'n Lucas." He leaned in, and Pete leaned away. "If you're brave, I'll even letcha steer."

"I'm good."

Lucas loosed the mooring ropes and sat down to switch on the motor. It was near silent as they slid out under open sky.

"Did you build that yourself?" Andre asked.

Lucas flashed him a bright smile. "I'm surprised ya noticed. Yeah, I made this. Ain't gonna bore you with the details, but—" He patted the car batteries stacked up in the back. "Three of these babies in series, linked up with jumper cables. Neat fifty pounds of thrust. And it don't get quieter than this. With this baby, they'll never see ya comin'."

The boat scraped up along a submerged branch with a hollow thud. Lucas hurriedly cut the motor and brought the prop up out of the water until they cleared the branch, but then he chuckled. "Ah, er— it's fine. Wasn't there before—must've broken off in the storm."

"How deep's the water?" Pete asked.

"'Bout, eh… chest high? Don't worry, with yesterday's rainfall, we ain't gonna have trouble gettin' past the tight spots."

Andre tried to look, but the water was murky. He couldn't see anything.

Lucas steered them away from the boathouse. The fog sat low to the ground, and a soft, sweet scent of magnolia hung in the still air as they cut across the water. On the opposite bank, behind a curtain of reeds, the bayou sank in past the trees in a deep web of wood and water.

It was all so green. The camera sat huddled up next to Andre on the seat, and he was tempted to pull off the cap and film even if the footage was worthless to the network. Lucas had a keen eye for wildlife, pointing out herons and songbirds by the bank. As they came up to a twist in the bayou, Lucas eased up on the throttle and pointed off the side. "Hey Andre, look at that. In the lilies."

There was a gap in the lily pads. A gator, sunk in the water up to its eyes, as still as a log. Andre shouldered the camera and framed a shot as they came up next to it.

Pete reared back from where he'd been peering at the water, tense and wary, and Lucas laughed. "They ain't gonna jump up and bite ya, June bug. Loosen up. Heck, if ya piss one off, just grab a paddle and smack 'im in the face."

"I'll keep that in mind."

They turned down a narrow fork and into the shade of the trees. The weeds were thicker here, and the boat bumped into submerged branches, forcing Lucas to shove the boat clear using a push pole. There was a break in the trees, and as the pirogue slid past, Andre saw two dirty plastic chairs sitting by the water's edge under a tupelo, facing out. Somewhere the old man with the shapeless yellow dog might sit. A small path led in between the trees, but he didn't see a house.

"So, ah—" Lucas said, "how'd y'all get into this TV business? This ghost huntin' stuff."

"Andre's been in this longer than I have. I was an anchor. Back in Texas. Evening news."

Lucas whistled. "No shit? Must've been nice."

"Yeah. It was." There was a pause. "The stress was a bitch, though. The sheer cutthroat competition. Backstabbing, people stepping on each other to get ahead. Sucked the fucking life outta me. Couple months in, and I knew I needed out. That shit'll give you grays."

"I getcha," Lucas said. "Felt the same way while I was doing my undergrad at ULL—"

"Lafayette?"

"You surprised? Were you expectin' some kinda inbred, illiterate coonass hick? I got a bachelor's degree same as you, city boy." Then, Lucas chuckled. "Ah, I'm just messin' with ya. Oh hey, remember that coon I talked about? Pretty sure I found it around here somewhere…"

"I saw a couple chairs back there," Andre cut in before Lucas could get into more detail about the raccoon. "Anybody live around here?"

Lucas wiggled the tiller. "I couldn't tell ya. I've run up and down the bayou, but I hardly ever go ashore. Some folks around here, they keep to their own. They don't take too kindly to strangers, never mind trespassers. You know how it is."

"Is that why we're not supposed to wander around at night?" Pete said.

"What's that?"

"At night. Your mom said it's dangerous to go out at night. Is there some kinda curfew? For the, uh— gators or something?"

Lucas didn't answer. Around a sharp bend, the way was blocked off. A massive cypress had uprooted itself and fallen across the water, half in, half out. Long strings of moss hung off the branches and stretched into the water.

"Shit," Lucas said. He cut the motor, stood up in the boat, and squinted at the trunk. The boat rocked, and Pete tensed. Lucas shook his head. "We're gonna have to double back, fellas. We ain't going this way."

"What do you mean?" Pete said. "Can't we bypass this? Carry the boat over?"

Lucas looked at him and broke into an ugly grin. "Y'wanna go knee deep in swamp mud, country mouse, don't let me hold you back."

Pete grimaced, spread his hands. "Let's turn this thing around."

Lucas passed out paddles, and after some struggling and arguing, they managed to turn the boat around. On a clear day, Lucas said, you could see the church broadcast antenna from here, but the world beyond their small corner of the bayou was a flat, steely gray void. The sky was empty, the sun a pale coin.

They had to take a detour—a shortcut, Lucas called it. He guided the boat between the trees into weed-choked shallows, his two feet planted solidly in the bottom of the boat to punt it along with strong pushes of the pole.

The vegetation pressed in tight, growing thick and green. Branches bent low over their heads like the ribs of a wing. The air was dead still. All around them, the foggy bayou was alive with sound—birds, insects, frogs. There was a tickle on Andre's neck, and he slapped at a mosquito. The air was cool, but he was soaked through.

The air shifted, like they'd entered a cave, or a mouth. Andre glanced back at the others. Pete was looking away, sweating heavily, pushing leaves out of his face. A haze seemed to have come over Lucas. He didn't say a word, pushing in long strokes, a milky look in his pale eyes. His body worked rhythmically, muscles and sinew bending, flexing. A wet gurgle of water, a strong push forward.

As the bayou grew deeper, darker, Andre realized the sound of water was all he could hear. No birds, no insects, no frogs.

"Y'all hear that?" Lucas said. His voice sounded strange in the fog.

"Hear what?" Pete said. "I don't hear anything."

"Exactly. We're gettin' close."

"Close to what?"

Lucas bared his teeth, chuckled. "You'll see."

Another strong push, and the pirogue lurched out of the weeds and into a stagnant patch of shallow, dirty water. A ragged shore sloped up from the mud. Twenty feet up the bank, a gutted black shack leaned in the shadow of a dogwood tree. The tree was in full bloom, a ghostly white shroud.

The boat ran aground in a long hushing sound of wood on wet mud, bending grass to the ground. Lucas hopped out and splashed over to the bow. He bent his skinny frame down to pull the boat out, but before Andre could move to help, he gave a hard tug and hauled the whole thing out singlehanded with them in it.

When he straightened up, he was bright-eyed, grinning, and extended a hand to help Andre up. "Welcome to Mama Cecile's."

"You mean the witch?" Pete said. He swayed a little, steadied himself on Andre. Squinting up at the rotting shack and the dogwood, he said, "Doesn't look like much."

Lucas shifted his weight. Restless excitement. "You ain't even seen the place yet. Come on." He went up the ragged slope of land, pausing halfway up to look back at them. The fog distorted his face, but his voice rang clear. "C'mon, fellas."

It really didn't look like much. The South was peppered with gutted houses like this, abandoned where they stood when the bayou gulped and swallowed at the land and hurricanes reshaped the coast. There wasn't anything inherently unsettling to Andre about the dilapidation. It was a relief to see the tree. It was nothing like he'd expected—soft with its haze of white flowers, quietly pretty. Harmless. Still, Andre couldn't shake the feeling they weren't wanted here. This was someone's home, and they were trespassing.

As he got the shoulder strap sorted, Pete came up next to him. "Whaddaya make of all this?"

"Could be an interesting location."

"And the fog? Can you see this?" Pete stepped out in front of the camera, and Andre framed him in the shot with with the hazy dogwood in the background. "How's this look? Can you see me clearly?"

Andre gave the all clear.

Pete headed off frame, following after Lucas. "So, what's the story? Mama Voodoo pisses off the wrong people, they off her— I miss anything?"

Lucas stopped in front of the tree. "You know, mama's an okay storyteller, but she always leaves out the best part. See, when those men caught up to Mama Cecile and that escaped slave, they didn't just shoot 'em. That would've been too quick." He gestured to the cabin, the black hole of the empty doorway. "They dragged 'em kickin' and screamin' out that door and strung 'em up. Hung 'em from this tree right here. They did Mama Cecile last so she could watch that girl die. Y'ever seen someone die by hanging? The bones break, and their neck just stretches out like a rubber band."

Glancing to the side, Andre saw an uncomfortable look cross Pete's face. But then Pete chuckled and said, "Interesting. Uh, let's get this on tape, huh? Andre— you wanna—?" He motioned vaguely, cleared his throat, stepped away and lit up a smoke.

"You're not gonna do the intro first?" Lucas said, looking dismayed.

Pete nodded to Andre. "He'll rearrange it in editing."

Lucas was beside himself with excitement when Andre let him try out the camera. Andre helped him frame and shoot the dogwood, and carefully guided him with a hand on his shoulder. To Lucas' credit, he treated the camera with gentle respect, and when he saw Pete watching them from where he sat on a fallen log, he said, "Do I look like a proper cameraman?"

And Pete gave a ghost of a smile.

While Pete ran the cigarette down to the filter, Lucas helped Andre get a few shots of the tree and cabin. Dirty beer bottles and cigarette butts lay discarded in the tall grass, shadows of truths and dares played by local kids. Fragments of glass crunched underfoot. None remained in the windows.

The hanging tree was a popular haunt back in the day, Lucas said. Kids would dare each other to trespass, to step inside the house and risk Mama Cecile's wrath. It was a rite of passage to have your picture taken in front of the hanging tree. They'd wait for the polaroids to develop, scared and a little excited, hoping the urban legend was true—that the photo would show the pale dead face of Mama Cecile hanging in the background, her arms reaching for them.

"And the best part? They didn't hang Mama Cecile right. It took her ages to die. It took her so damn long the guys sitting around watching and waiting got bored waitin' on her. The slave owner, though—he was this mean sumbitch. This guy, he took his knife to Mama Cecile, drew a line all the way around her face with the blade. Whistlin' the whole time. Then, he peeled her face right off while she choked to death."

Lucas looked over at Andre, but Andre was filming, and said nothing. "Mama got one thing right—Mama Cecile sure got the last laugh. When that cold sumbitch kicked it, Mama Cecile made sure he'd never make it to the other side. She raised his crumblin' body right outta the grave and set his corpse walkin' again. And to this day, he stalks this bayou, lookin' for the woman that cursed him, and takin' his anger out on everybody else." He pulled his lips back, baring his grinning teeth. "Where d'ya think the story about the Whistler came from?"

He moved closer to the lens, filling the shot. Softly singing.

"A-tisket, a-tasket, he'll put you in a casket. He'll draw a line around your face, and then he will unmask it."

* * *

The doorway yawned, but it wasn't an invitation to enter. They did a short segment out front, and while Pete read off Andre's notes, Andre kept the camera on the deep dark hole of the missing door. Light pitched into the house, and shapes stood indistinct inside.

"Let's do a walkthrough, huh?" Pete said. He came over, made Andre jump when he unceremoniously shoved his notebook back in his pocket.

"I feel like I should warn y'all," Lucas said, stepping in front of the doorway. "Mama Cecile don't take too kindly to trespassers. The last time people walked through that door against her wishes, she went and killed every last one of 'em."

Pete snorted softly. "Fat lotta good that did her." He glanced over at the doorway. "So a couple people happen to die after entering. Exactly how many more people have gone in there and got away without a scratch? Classic confirmation bias."

"But people have died. You ready to take that chance?"

They eyed each other for a second, then Pete shook his head with a chuckle and stepped over the threshold and into the gutted house. He waved for Andre to follow.

Andre hesitated. He watched Pete move deeper into the house, heard a bottle roll away when he kicked it in the dark. If records showed Mama Cecile to have been a real person, there was no way this was her house. That tree outside couldn't possibly be the hanging tree. But it felt like they could've been. The air was different in this place. Unspeakably old, motionless, like the inside of a freshly opened sarcophagus. Dormant—that's the word for it.

"Hey—" Pete looked back at him. He'd switched on a flashlight, and swung the beam across the room. "You coming, Strickland? You're not about to puss out on me, are you?"

Andre didn't have to look to know Lucas was smiling, watching him hungrily. The moment he stepped into the dark, Lucas' footsteps followed close behind with an uncomfortable overlap.

Andre moved carefully. The whole shack stood at an angle, and the floor had rotted through in places. The windows were gray squares of dense vegetation, letting a trickle of light through onto the floor. Andre sidestepped a broken plank studded with nails. More broken glass, chocolate bar wrappers, a discarded lighter. In the corner, bare shelves next to which someone had carved initials and a heart into the wall with a pocketknife. 1989.

Pete kicked one of the wrappers aside. "Nothing says creepy old haunted house like modern trash, right? Kinda cancels out the creep factor. We'll have to clean up before filming— Shit, is that a fucking hash pipe? Some jackass broke it in two."

He spoke in a casual, conversational tone, but picked through the house gingerly, shining the light around like he was constantly expecting something to jump out at him. Old broken furniture had been piled up in a heap. Two chairs balanced on top of a third, the whole thing ready to collapse. The boards creaked and groaned like timbers under their weight. One of them wobbled. Watch your step, Pete said, pretending he hadn't just stumbled.

Andre stayed close on Pete as they navigated past the barricade. He could hear Lucas behind him, his ragged breathing more so than his footsteps. In the dark and heavy swamp air, Lucas moved nearly silently.

"Have a look over there," Lucas said, stepping close enough that his warm breath tickled Andre's neck.

Pete glanced over, and Lucas motioned to the far corner, where some junk had been pushed up against the wall. Pete stepped to the wall, shone the beam around. "Huh. You guys smell that? Wait, what the heck is—"

Andre went in for a closer look, but Pete jumped back, crashing into him. For a moment, they jostled for footing, but then they disentangled, Pete jerked the flashlight up, and Andre saw what had been built against the wall.

It was a kind of living shrine. Those were the first words to come to mind. A gray mass of stringy material spread its limbs out across the wall. In the grainy half light, its skin seemed to crawl. Its joints stretched. Pete held the flashlight steady, and Andre framed it squarely in the shot. Bone, flesh, and wood woven together into a wheel and bound with twine. Big bones, roped with shrunken flesh. Ugly. A sour smell of dried meat and rot came off the structure. It didn't move. Of course it wouldn't.

"What the fuck is that?" Pete turned, wide-eyed, startled. "The fuck is this, Lucas?"

Lucas made an ambivalent sound, but he couldn't mask how excited he was. "Beats the hell outta me."

"How long's this been here?"

"I dunno. Found the place like this first time I came. Hell, you're the expert, ain't ya? I was hopin' you could tell me more."

Pete wavered. He flickered the light over the twisting spokes of the wheel, the clean void at the heart of it, where the spokes joined, like there was something missing from the center. "Some kinda— Could be some kinda voodoo altar. Uh— Andre? Any thoughts?"

"It's not voodoo. Or hoodoo. My guess is some kind of art installation."

Pete broke into a sharp laugh. "Our understanding of what constitutes art does not match up, man."

Andre wasn't sure why he was expecting the nest of dried up limbs to end in human hands. They were tipped with hooves. Deer legs, maybe bovine. Muscle fibers shriveled a pinkish gray. They stood around looking at it, then Pete said, "Although— this might work for a backdrop." He stepped out in front of the wall, the multitude of legs framing him in a halo.

Lucas playfully nudged Andre in the ribs, and the camera wobbled. "What'd I tell y'all, huh? Ya gotta admit this is pretty fuckin' weird."

"Weird, sure," Pete said, moving away from the wall. He stumbled on something, straightened up with a stifled curse. "But the real question is, what the hell is 'this'? You didn't make this thing yourself?"

Lucas laid a hand flat against the wheel, rubbed one of the legs. The exposed flesh rasped against his skin. He lifted his hand, rubbed his fingertips, sniffed them. "Nah, I'd remember makin' something like this."

Pete was hunched over, examining the dark bundle he'd tripped over. He nudged it with his foot. It sounded heavy. "Check it out. Backpack. One of those kids must've left it."

"Have a look in the bag," Lucas said. "Who knows, there might be a camera." In a stammer, he clarified, "Some ID, I mean. So we can help get it back to the owner. Y'want me to check?"

Pete flinched when Lucas took a quick step towards him, but unzipped the bag and poked the flashlight in, sorting through the contents while Lucas watched. The wheel of bones hung next to them on the wall, forgotten, right in Andre's blind spot, blocked by the camera on his shoulder. He could smell it. It made him uneasy, but turning to look directly at it didn't seem right. He longed to get back outside.

Pete passed a camcorder up to Lucas, who excitedly switched it on only to groan in disappointment. "Battery's dead." He popped the tape compartment, held the cassette up to the light. "Used up about half. Might be able to recover some footage from this."

"There's not much else in here," Pete said. "Got a charger, clothes, cheap watch— car keys? Wait a minute, I got a wallet here." He pulled it out, flipped it open. "Sixty bucks cash, credit cards, Texas license." He went quiet, looking at the card, then gave Andre an uncomfortable look. "This guy, this—" He read off the license. "—Ethan Winters. He left all this stuff behind. This guy come here to off himself or something?"

"Didja say Ethan?" Lucas said.

"Winters, yeah."

"Aww hell, I know the guy. He's stayin' in town. This dumbass— this dumbass capsized his boat fishing or somethin', said he had to leave all his stuff behind—y'know, on account of not wantin' it to get wet. What an idiot, right? But I mean, he's fine. He ain't dead or nothin'. Unless he went and kicked it since the last time I saw 'im. I guess that could happen. Anyway— I can, ah— I'll get this stuff to him next time I'm in town. Still need my AAs, after all."

Pete passed Lucas the wallet, and he pocketed it and shouldered the bag.

On the way out, Andre couldn't resist looking back at the spider's sprawl of legs in the depths of the house. Then, he'd followed Pete and Lucas through the doorway, ducking under the thick overhang of kudzu, and they were back out in the foggy green of the bayou and he could wave goodbye forever to that sour, sickly taxidermy. His stomach settled. The dead choke of rot outside had never felt so appealing.

That thing in the house, it wasn't hoodoo—definitely wasn't voodoo. As far as he knew, there was nothing remotely occult about it, but someone had to have made it. Someone had taken that bare flesh, and bent and spun it together into something it wasn't.

* * *

I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you liked this chapter, tell your friends, leave a comment, and hopefully I'll see you all next week. Might take the week off to catch up on writing this bad boy.


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